Good morning, dear people reading this.
I think I will not attempt my old man jog routine this morning. I need to get prepared to run off to do some tree work with the old boom truck. She’s an old 1971 clunker, but still a good one. I just hope she holds up to doing what needs to be done today. As a point of safety, I’ve learned to always keep a climbing rope with me in the basket—so that if anything goes amiss with my remote start function or hydraulics while I’m up there 40 feet, I can at least rappel back to the ground. Once that little job is knocked out, I need to shift attention to some urgent sign work.
Have a great day knocking out stuff on your TO DO list—even if the only entry so far is “GET OUT OF BED.”
Blessings. Ray
Notice the title “Owner of the Harvest.” Most other translations say, “Lord of the harvest.” In any case, He’s the Owner and Overseer. Is His ownership and lordship limited to this huge harvest of men’s souls? Absolutely not! Let’s not overlook what has just transpired in chapters 8 and 9 of Matthew. I believe that grasping these facts is crucial to a sound Biblical worldview. In this overview, I’m opting to use the title “LORD.” So we’ve seen Jesus presented as Lord over sickness, LORD over spirits, LORD over weather, Lord over sins, LORD over death, and now as Lord over the harvest—which I understand to be the reaping of the souls of men by being rescued/transferred from the vast field of human lostness into the barn of the eternal Kingdom of God. He is absolute LORD—it’s all HIS!—not mine, or yours, or ours, but HIS! These are not small technicalities.
We must not miss the prescribed prayer request that Jesus sets forth. We are instructed to “plead” or pray that the Lord would raise up and send workers/reapers to the harvest. Jesus has to know what He’s doing here. He knows that no one can legitimately pray a prayer like this without making himself available to engage in the harvest. He knows that if we can embrace the importance and seriousness of this task, we actually become answers, at least in part, to our own prayer. So we get to be harvested, then to become harvesters. What a deal!
Philippians 2:9-11 offers some huge motivation for engaging in this huge operation. “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Here’s my best conclusion: The absolute best way for me to properly fit into this grand scheme of things is to make sure Jesus is MY LORD.