A Wise Son, A Shameful Son

“He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully.” Proverbs 10:5

“Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.” John 4:35b.

When Jesus saw the woman at the well in John 4, he saw his Father’s harvest fields. When Jesus remained in the city at the request of its citizens, he remained to work in his Father’s harvest fields.

There is the son who gathers, and then there is the son who sleeps. The son who gathers is in the fields looking for ripe produce, his eye is on the fields, he is attentive to his surroundings. This son’s mind and heart and soul are alive to the people around him; they matter to him because they matter to the Father.

The son who sleeps cares not for those around him; they are there simply to serve, to function, to perform. They might as well be machines. This son has a mind, a heart, a soul – asleep, insensitive to the need, the pain, the death, the lostness around him.

Can we hear the cry around us? “Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20).

Shall this be the cry in the harvest field in which the Father has placed us?

The Beginning of Months

“This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves…” Exodus 12:2-3a.

There is the Passover, with its emphasis on the individual and families, and then there is the Day of Atonement, with its emphasis on the nation. We have the individual and we have the collective. I can deny neither my individual sin nor the collective sin that I partake of – I ought to confess both, I ought to repent of both.

We ought to have a “beginning of months” – there ought to be a time, or a season, when we can say, “I ate the Lamb and the judgment of God passed over me.” Some of us are blessed to be able to never remember a time when we were not eating the Lamb, but for many of us, perhaps for most of us, there is a time or a season that we can look back to and say, “Ah, that was the beginning of months in my life, that was the first month of the first year of my new life in Jesus Christ.”

Those who can look to such a time ought to rejoice with those who were truly raised eating the Lamb and have never known anything different; and those who were raised eating the Lamb ought to rejoice with those who have come to the Table later in life. Both ought to know and confess that the judgment of God passes over them because of the Lamb, and only because of the Lamb.

Is the blood of the Lamb on the doorpost and lintel of my house (Exodus 12:7)? Is it on my heart and mind and soul and spirit? Is it on the temple of my body? Is it on me? Does it testify that I belong to Jesus Christ, that I was once a sinner under the judgment of God – but that God saw the blood of the Lamb and passed over me?

When was your beginning of months? When was the last time you shared your story with someone?

“For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” (1 Cor. 5:7b).