Signs of Harvest
By Lori Rosenkvist
Lori is Editorial Team Leader and Associate Publisher of Logos Productions Inc. She is also Editorial Team Leader for Seasons of the Spirit, a lectionary-based curriculum for learning, serving, and worship.

As the calendar page is turned to September, nature also observes the movement with its own perceptible changes. In many places, the moist greens of summer have ripened into seeds, and while flowers may be bursting with their showiest show, the signals in grasses and grains are of slowing down, drying, and harvest.

Whether you are a gardener, a farmer, or a city dweller, you are familiar with your own signs of maturity and ripening, and of harvest. It is just a little less tangible for Christian educators to feel in synch with this as they are presently in the process of beginning - cultivating, sowing seeds, and planting hopes. When is the harvest for a Christian educator?

If we think about Christian education through the metaphor of farming, harvest would likely happen all at once at the end of the church school year, after months of tending and nurture. Maybe it would look something like the parables from Matthew where growth is measured in increase, where weeds and wheat grow up together and are separated out at the end.

In the real world, however, despite our interest in keeping rows straight and meeting ambitious program goals, growth happens all the time and sometimes occurs in unexpected ways and places. Our challenge, then, is to be faithful to our calling to nurture faith, trusting God's work to enliven faith in the learners for whom we care. This should alert us to the many ways in which we experience harvest week by week.

Harvest may look different than we think it should. With a well-prepared session, engaging activities, plenty of assistance, good discipline, a bit of memorization, and or course, the "right" curriculum we assume we will meet objectives and that learning will take place. How do we then handle the disappointment when our learners do not follow the session plan, but become fascinated with something we had not prepared for them? Are you able to trust that this too is harvest? Are you able to believe that this too is a product of faith's growth?

The frustration may be more than you are prepared for, as you feel enslaved by your own expectations. This is not to mention the assumption or feeling that it all depends on you. Recall the words attributed to Paul in 1 Corinthians 3 where he asks: “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth....For we are God's servants, working together." (1Cor 3:5-7, 9)

In all that you do, strive to be a faithful servant. Keep alert to signs
of harvest, and give thanks for the growth God gives to each one.

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