The Tribune

By Rev Angela Bosfield

Palacious

THIS time of the year we think about the goodness of God and the bounty of the earth. Our churches are decorated with the fruit, vegetables, manufactured products, straw work and other items that represent the “fruit of our labour”.

Arrangements of flowers and plants blend with appropriate harvest colours so that everything speaks to us of abundance and blessings.

Truly out of death comes new life. Each grain of seed that was planted ‘died’ in order that we might reap a harvest, just as soldiers sacrificed their lives for a nation to be born or to preserve it from the grim reality of a dictator who threatens the liberty and stability of other nations. On Remembrance Sunday, we pause to recall those who represented our interests elsewhere.

Even more so, we celebrate our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who was the seed of salvation dying that we may reap the harvest of eternal life, and who was a soldier in God’s army dying to overcome sin, evil and death itself. We all need the new nature to replace our old one:

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on pleasures” (James 4: 1-3 LAB).

Our only fitting response to Christ’s victory for us is to believe the truth of our salvation, and live a life that reaps a harvest of right living and sacrificial loving. The efforts of those who cultivate crops and work hard in industrial pursuits lead us to understand that a similar energy and attention to detail is required for the cultivation of spiritual gifts and virtues:

“Who is wise and understanding? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom” does not come from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness” (James 3:13-18 LAB).

What are you cultivating as the fruit of all of your life’s labours? Is it fruit that will last? Are you engaged in doing spiritual warfare to bring justice and peace or have you deserted the heavenly cause and “gone over to the other side”? Live a life producing spiritual harvests every day, grateful for all that God has done, is doing and will do, for and through you.