Tag: harvest

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Imagine the possibilities

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Kenya
Madagascar
Haiti

Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:35-38)

One of my most vivid memories from our medical mission trips was encountering a sea of people every place we set up a clinic. We would leave the guest house early in the morning to drive on highways, narrow city streets, back roads, dirt roads, and across shallow streams. Our driver would successfully navigate steep rutted hills, mountainside roads with no guardrails, and insist his way through standstill traffic in the middle of towns with no traffic lights.

When we finally arrived at a school, church, or tent, a crowd of men, women, children, were waiting for us. Everyone showed up in remote places where there was no medical. Some had walked miles through the night to get from their town to the place where they heard the clinic would be. From nursing newborns to grandparents with canes, lines filled makeshift waiting rooms.

Every day was a full day. The providers, nurses, and pharmacists saw three to four hundred patients a day and gave out as much medication as we could bring with us. Each day a new crowd was a new challenge.

When Jesus saw similar crowds in the cities and villages of Galilee, he saw an opportunity. He saw people who desperately needed teaching, compassion, healing, and a shepherd. Jesus saw beyond people and problems to a harvest ready to be gathered.

What would it be like to see the world like Jesus did? Sometimes I feel compassion. More often I’m amazed and annoyed at the number of people who appear harassed and helpless. My eyes see impossibility rather than possibilities.

Lord, help me see people like you do.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Add this to your schedule

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Dan Loran on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 23.

As you might imagine, God was on my mind a lot in full-time ministry. If I wasn’t at church teaching or preaching or preparing to preach or teach, I was visiting a member of the congregation in the hospital or their home. Many of my daily tasks orbited around the Lord. My daily habits of scripture reading, prayer, devotional writing, and listening to Christian music followed me into retirement.

It was and still is hard to remember that even in church circles, not everyone’s life is infused with spirituality. Thoughts of God are a weekly occurrence, typically on a Sunday morning. Faith is there, but so is work, household chores, schoolwork, family commitments, hobbies, sports, self care, friends, sleep, and screen time. God is just one of the many priorities that vie for our attention, energy, and affection.

So God puts himself on the calendar. Pretty clever. The cycles of planting and harvesting were punctuated with feasts and celebrations that acknowledged God as provider and gave him thanks (Leviticus 23). He made himself a scheduled part of their work and rest each day, week, season, and year. It was virtually impossible to forget that he gives us life and breath and all things.

I guess we could do that. Put God on your daily schedule. In fact, put him on first, so that nothing else interferes with your time with him.