Harvest for the World

I am a product of a family and a United Methodist Church tradition that taught me, through God's love, guidance and power, to focus my priorities on helping to better the lives of those around me of every kind of people, of every station in life. I've also been taught that in order to do that, I should begin by assisting the people who need help by first trying to meet their temporal needs as much as I humanly can and creating a genuine, caring relationship with them.

Then, offering to disciple them in the knowledge of the Gospel message of Christ's unconditional love for all people if they wish to accept that discipleship. If so, leading them to establish, build, and maintain a lifelong, stable relationship with God along with other people who also believe in God wherever they live, work, or go to school.

The important lessons that I was taught regarding caring for those in need that I still follow as an adult, are now echoing in my mind like the incessant ringing of a bell, warning me that something urgent needs my immediate attention. That bell may be ringing in your mind, too. When I read the Bible reading for this week, I felt that I was being directed to the urgent matter that my immediate attention should be focused on. In Luke 10:1-11, 16-20, Jesus proclaimed an urgent state of affairs to watch out for and a set of instructions for us to follow to remedy the condition.

Luke 10:1-2 reads, "After these things, the Lord commissioned seventy-two others and sent them on ahead in pairs to every city and place he was about to go. 2 He said to them, 'The harvest is bigger than you can imagine, but there are few workers. Therefore, plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.'" CEB

These urgent words from Jesus are to be taken seriously and they lift up the need for us to ask ourselves a couple of critical questions. First, why don't we have a greater sense of urgency regarding the vast number of hurting people who need to be harvested through God's love? And secondly, why haven't we been preparing more workers to help care for this urgent need?