Constant fruitfulness?

These photos arrived in my inbox last month from my youngest daughter, finishing her work on Waiheke, a small island east of Auckland, of this year’s wine harvest. Along with crates of chardonnay, Syrah and pinot gris, there is the sense of completion she feels as she heads out to set up a new adventure in Kerikeri near the Bay of Islands. Watching both a harvest being reported (in our spring!) and a planting of a new prospect (in her autumn!) put me in mind of the lovely scriptures in Genesis 49 about Joseph (‘Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring, whose branches climb over a wall’) and Psalm 1:

Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

The scriptures are full of references to how we plant or reap in season (Numbers 13:20; Job 5:26; Proverbs 20:4; Mark 11:13) and how God in his wisdom has ordered the earth (before we messed it up with our stupid burning of fossil fuels) to bring forth rains in season (Leviticus 26:4; Deuteronomy 11:14, 28:12; Jeremiah 5:24; Ezekiel 34:26; Acts 14:17). This is a properly creative act on behalf of our God, who sustains within the creative act and enables our efforts at farming and animal care (see Psalm 104) to bear fruit. When we bear fruit is, therefore, not up to us. We have to be ready, we have to do the preparatory work, not like the sluggard of Proverbs 20:4 who had not ploughed in season, and be perceptive enough to notice when harvest is approaching. Paul, in writing to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:2), tells him to preach the word, but to be prepared in season and out of season for what might arise. This is merely wisdom. But it is also wisdom to wait until the harvest is given, and then remember that it is not we who enabled this. All harvests belong to God.