The Harvest Drift

Dependence on God doesn’t end at the harvest.

In last week's blog we talked about the invisible season; the season between planting and harvest that God built into the rhythm of the ancient farmer's life. 

Every year they planted, waited through a season they couldn't see anything working, and then harvested. Each year they depended on God to do something they couldn't, during a season they could see nothing.

We've lost that practice. And with it, some of our dependence on God.

But there is an even harder practice that the ancient Israelite farmers knew intimately and one I think we miss entirely.

They had built into their calendars three major festivals: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. All three of these festivals were based on the harvest, but here is the part God stopped me on.

The festivals didn’t take place during the invisible season.
They took place during the harvest.

I know that may not seem like a big deal but thing about this…

You’ve waited, you’ve prayed for the harvest, and finally it’s here.
God was faithful and you have the crops for another year.
But before you are even done harvesting them, you are asked to stop and celebrate.

During your busiest season, when you had work to do.
You stopped and remembered who provided for you.

God could have made the feasts during the slow seasons when you had time to relax and celebrate but he didn’t.

He made them during the middle of you bringing in the harvest, which was the very work that your entire survival depended on.

I don’t know about you, but I would be thinking God really? Now?
I finally have work to do.
Things are finally working.
Let’s get this harvest secured, then we can celebrate!

But that’s our way.
Not God’s way.
He says…
Stop, come, feast, and remember.

The work will be there, just like the harvest was.
Be faithful by remembering my faithfulness.
Trust me.

And here is the even more intense part that I really would have struggled with, these three major festivals were what they called pilgrimage feasts. Which meant they didn’t just have a nice dinner at the house and call it a day.

They traveled back to Jerusalem to celebrate corporately.
Now depending on where you live, that might have taken a minute.

They didn’t have planes, trains, or automobiles so it may have been a several day excursion just to get there and then the festival, and then the travel back. 

Some people might have left their fields in the middle of harvest for three weeks.
So they weren’t just stopping, they would leave their fields entirely.
They would walk away from their harvest, trusting God that everything would be there when they got back.

The fruits of their labor sitting there, partially harvested, exposed, and unattended.

I am not going to lie.
That would be challenging for me.
It is easy to try to hold onto the abundance when it comes.
It’s like we are afraid it will leave, and never come again.

But this was their rhythm.
A reminder of the seasons God set up.

I don’t know, but I think the reason God made this part of the plan is because just like we are tempted to not trust during the invisible seasons when it feels like nothing is working…

We are even more tempted during the harvest to forget who actually caused the harvest.
It is easy during the abundance to forget all that. 
To drift away from trusting God, and trust what your physical eyes can see.

And the biggest problem is the harvest drift doesn’t feel like forgetting.

In the invisible season, the dependence is obvious. You know how badly you need God. There is nothing else to lean on. But in the harvest, the abundance feels like evidence. It feels like competence. Like the system working. Like the reward for faithfulness. The drift doesn't feel like drift, it feels like arriving. And that is exactly what makes it so dangerous.

God knew this, and had Moses warned Israel about it before they ever set foot in the Promised land when they had nothing, before the abundance came:

"Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God... Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God." — Deuteronomy 8:11-14

Your heart will become proud and you will forget.
Not you might…you will.

And that’s not just a warning for the Israelites,
It’s a warning for all of us.

Not because any of us decided to rebel.
Because the abundance can make forgetting feel like thriving.

I have watched it happen. You probably have too. 
I have heard and seen too many entrepreneurs; good people who genuinely started with open hands, who when success came, began to drift. 

They started saying things like:
“I have built this program.”
“I made sure my business will never fail.”
“I have built an audience or an email list so I can make money whenever I want.”

Somewhere along the way the story shifted. What started as gratitude became control. What started as stewardship became ownership. And it happened slowly, quietly, and in the middle of a harvest season that felt like a blessing. 

I think that is exactly why God built the feast into the harvest.

At the very moment it is easiest to forget Him; when the crops are coming in, when the work is paying off, when the evidence says you can depend on yourself, that is when God interrupts us. He asks us to stop before we close our hand around the harvest and call it ours.

Stop. Come. Feast. Remember.

Maybe that is why the firstfruits offering was such a key practice. Before you harvested everything, you gave away the first of what came in, trusting that the rest would follow, just as the first had. You trusted before completion. You opened your hand before the full harvest was in. You stopped and remembered.

That is the posture God is after in every season.

An open hand in the invisible, empty, hard season.
And an open hand in the abundant, full season.

I always wondered what Paul really meant in Philippians 4:11-13 when he said,

“¹¹ I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

He doesn’t say he arrived at contentment. He says he learned it.
That learning makes me think that it was a process. 
The seasons of his life produced something in him that he didn’t start with.

He wasn’t more spiritual than us, or had a special gift of personality that made him content.
The contentment was the fruit of practicing a posture.

He practiced an open hand in the wilderness season.
An open hand in the harvest season.
And keeping his eyes on God as his provider in every season, regardless of what it looked liked.

That’s what the farmer practiced every year.
Depending on God during the invisible season.
Depending on God with feasts during the harvest.
And always returning to the one who gave them both.

That is what we are called to practice.

Not just trusting God when things are hard.
But remaining open-handed when they are working.

That is the harder practice.
And it may be the most important one.