Empty Harvest

For Thursday, January 18, 2007
Proverbs 20:4

The sluggard does not plow in the autumn;
he will seek at harvest and have nothing.

The sluggard does not plow in the time when the cold begins because, well, it is cold. No season is a good time for him to plow. Either it is too cold or too hot; too dry or too wet. And if the weather is ever right, then it is too nice a day to work!

The odd thing about the sluggard is that he still expects to find a harvest. He is surprised to find no fruit from his non-labor. He was sure he had plowed or that someone else had done it for him. He certainly thought about plowing and intended to get around to it.

And yet all his intentions serve no purpose. All his hoping that someone else would do the work has resulted in nothing. He may seek, but he will not find; for he sought the fruit of no work. And as sure as this sluggardly example is repeated over and again through the years, so it is repeated at the end of many lives when souls seek the heavenly reward that does not exist. All the reasons for not studying the Word of life; all the excuses for not laboring for heavenly fruit will do the seeker of a harvest no good.

In truth, God will brand all who did not have time for the gospel, who did not have time to find the truth as sluggards. For it is not intellectual honesty nor scientific inquiry that keeps a person from the turth. Rather it is the laziness of the soul that is content with the ease of not living for God that keeps the field unplowed and the harvest empty.