The Glad Reapers

"Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you." (Hosea 10:12). A farmer does not grow one plant at a time, but rather plants whole fields of crops at a time. If some of the individual seeds don't end up growing correctly and in the end aren't harvested, there are still plenty more that do. Every time we act in righteousness, we are sowing seeds. Not every single good deed will eventually bear fruit, but if we are constantly abounding in good works, constantly sowing more and more seeds of righteousness, then even if some seeds fall by the wayside, or take root in stony ground, or get choked out by weeds, we still have plenty of seeds that grow to maturity and bring forth thirty, sixty or a hundred fold. This verse in Hosea says that we must sow in righteousness and the Lord for His part will rain righteousness upon us. This is a beautiful illustration of how grace and our own efforts work in concert to bring about God's mercy. God is constantly pouring out the blessings of heaven upon us. He blesses us and forgives us and loves us whether or not we want it or recognize it or appreciate it. But if we do nothing, if we let our fields lay fallow, then God's love and His righteousness will have no lasting effect. But if we break up that fallow ground and through our faith and our good works and our righteousness, or, in other words, through all we can do, we sow unto ourselves righteousness, then those seeds can take in God's love and forgiveness and grow that we may one day reap mercy. The budding seeds of righteousness can only grow if they are watered with the rains of righteousness poured down by our Father, but the rains of righteousness are only of any real value if there are seeds that can take in the life giving water. Our crops of righteousness can't grow without the rains from Heaven, and God doesn't want to dump His precious blessings onto a barren, fallow field where they will do no one any good. But when God's righteousness and our righteousness come together, the miracle of mercy grows and flourishes. Neither grace alone nor our good works alone can bring about the harvest of mercy, but together something incredible happens. We as sinners who have no right to expect forgiveness are redeemed, and our Father Who has no reason to hope for His children to return gets to welcome us back home. We are collaborators with our Father in this great work, and both we and our Father will be Glad Reapers of the mercy that we have grown together through the righteousness we have sown and the righteousness that our Father has rained down upon us.