Imagine if you would a field as far as the eye could see of $1 bills.  There is literally millions of dollars worth of bills on the ground.  You can have as many bills as you like but you only have the span of 1 week to gather them.  If you had this opportunity, how hard would you work?  Would you call friends and family and tell them?  What would it feel like if at the end of the week you only picked up $500 worth of bills and yet there was enough money in the field to be become legitimate millionaires?

Now imagine that you are the owner of the field.  You are willing to pay workers very, very good wages to go gather the bills for you, but you had trouble finding workers.  Some said they didn’t want to harvest because it was too high risk for their day job.  Others said they were too busy.   Still others wanted to watch TV or be on the internet.  They didn’t have the time.  Now imagine that you did find a 5 workers and with all the millions of dollars available, you were only able to gather $1000 and some of that went to pay wages.  How painful would that be to watch the harvest be so close yet so far?

Gathering in the crops is hard work.  I know as I come from a long line of farmers in my heritage.  I still have family who are farmers.  I have friends who are farmers.   Here is my late uncle’s farm:

Farming is just a lot of work.  You must prepare the soil, remove weeds, plant it, fertilize it, water it, pray for it, protect it, etc…  And when harvest comes, it is just beautiful.  Massive fields of wheat or even sunflowers like this patch not far from where I live:

The fields usually are not small.  And when harvest comes, it is HARD work.  Up at 4 am and back to the house at midnight.  Seriously.  When it becomes ripe, a lot of work has to be done very quickly or the harvest will go bad.

Jesus says the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.  That means a whole lot of work for just a few people.  And to not bring it in?  To have acres and acres of ready and ripe crop just wilt out in the field?  That’s a harsh reality to watch.  Especially after months of labor and love.

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Mt 9:37-38).

Ask the Lord.  That is what he asks of us.  It would terrible for the Father not to receive the reward of his labor.  Praying.