Gold in the Harvest
By Cheryl Courtney Semick | 1st October 2007
The Set-up Crew arrived at 4 a.m. Their energy alone could power the sound system that was to accompany the host that would arrive at ten.
For hours they labored laying cable, setting up speakers, cameras and mikes. But this team is not the typical ‘roadie crew.’ They relish the relationships they’ve built over the past year just from setting up and tearing down our portable church; one would never know these guys were working.
My husband and I arrived around eight to our first view of the new Peoria Civic Center addition. Wow. It’s incredible! We rode the double escalators up to the balcony area where our tables were already set-up, skirted and waiting for us to begin preparations for our role in the program.
Everything looked wonderful for our church’s first anniversary service but the beauty of the occasion shone brighter than all the arrangements. Within the hour the lobby and ballroom began to swell with worshipers and by 10 o’clock a throng of joy pierced through the new ceiling and rushed into the throne room of the Most High God.
It was time to celebrate the harvest. The seeds planted years ago by a few had been watered by a few more, germinated and sprouted. Now was the time to gather and lift our voices in praise to the One who brought the increase.
When I think of the word harvest, I think of both death and hope.
Death because deep inside the dark soil, there’s a violent tearing, a dying. The seed ceases to exist in order to live and grow – to take on a completely different form.
Hope because it is the fruition of plans, of dreams and goals. It’s the proof that what we can’t see, what we long for, will someday be reality.
Isn’t that just like our dreams - tiny, but filled with great potential? Tragically, we fear death and since we don’t understand the harvest principle, we nurse those dreams in our finite minds, never releasing them to grow beyond ourselves.
Jesus explained this process to his disciples as recorded in the book of John, chapter 12, verse 24, saying, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
When I stood in that beautiful ballroom that sunny Sunday morning, lifting my voice with the body of Christ to which I belong, my eyes were filled with tears of joy. I marveled at how the dream for this church plant began in the hearts and minds of many individuals, myself included, and that those seeds were all alone until we each chose to plant our dream in the soil of faith.
Through trust in the One who creates life, we let our dream die in that soil. We soaked it with prayer, tilled the ground with hard work and commitment, and patiently waited for it to sprout. What we hadn’t expected was that on the first Sunday our auditorium was standing room only, and on our first birthday we needed the Civic Center just to all meet in one place. The dream had taken on a different form than we had ever imagined.
Christ died so that we could live – so that he could live in us. On earth he was one man, in heaven, the ascended Christ’s body consists of millions, many still here on earth, a completely different form than the seed in the womb of a virgin.
Many want their Jesus to remain the baby in the manger, or to stay the kind man who did miracles and healed the sick. It seems safer to keep Jesus in that form than to risk knowing him in his new physical form: the Church.
So where is the gold in the harvest? It is in the planting, the watering and the waiting and in the gathering.