Sunday Faith Reflection

For the week when we are reminded that "the harvest is plentiful."

So I took a week off from Christendom Reborn. I missed it! But it was a major crunch week: two major deadlines, a family visit, and the job of holding the wheel at Law & Liberty while our editor was away on vacation. Coming off of that sort of week, it actually felt like a bit of a relief to return to the inauspiciously titled “14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.” I’m still decompressing a little, and can appreciate a little normalcy. Every day doesn’t have to be a feast.

There’s something very appropriate, in fact, about stepping out of a season of feasting and into a reminder that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Alright, party’s over. Back to work, everybody!

Here’s a remarkable fact that I reflect on from time to time. Roughly 7% of all the people who have ever lived are currently alive today. Advances in agriculture, medicine, and technology enabled a population explosion over the past 150 years. (Even the last 50.) We may be headed back the other way now, but there are still a lot of people alive right now. Jesus’ Apostles obviously accomplished some amazing things. But even if they had succeeded in converting every single soul on Earth (at that time) it would have been, at most, about as many souls as are presently living just here in the United States.

Friends, the harvest is truly plentiful. Anyone tempted to hunker down and wait for a more promising hour, “BenOp” fashion, should consider that we may be seeing “peak population” at least for the foreseeable future, and it’d be a real shame to quit the field at the exact moment when there are more souls than ever to be saved.

Laborers aren’t quite as scarce as in Jesus’ day, happily. At least, there are a lot more Christians now, but to reap a harvest we of course have to be willing to work the fields. How many of us are doing that? Could we do it better? Seems like a good question to reflect on as one eases back into “ordinary time.”

Understandably, most of us find it a little difficult at times to figure out what work God has for us in a given moment. Our “assignments” generally aren’t delivered in printed instructions, or delivered through orations from angelic messengers. Unfortunately. Or perhaps fortunately. I go back and forth on that one.

I won’t pretend to have any great solution to this puzzle, but I will offer just two thoughts.

First of all, when I read the lives of great saints, I am struck by how often they find themselves changing course, getting diverted from their original plan and finding a way to roll with the punches. Occasionally they do get an angelic messenger, but more often not. They read the room, as it were. Even if they don’t like the room at all. If you don’t have some willingness to do that, you probably won’t be a particularly useful servant, because God’s providential view is obviously much better and clearer than ours.

Here’s the second thing. When I reflect on the things I’ve done in life that may have “made a difference,” one thing that comes back to me is the handful of conversations (not many of these, but the rare occasion certainly sticks with you) when a reader has told me (perhaps approaching me after a lecture, or sending me an email) that something I wrote impacted a major life choice. “I was so moved by your column on X that I talked to my husband and we decided, yes, we should have another baby, even though we’re not sure we can afford it. It’s worth it. And she’s beautiful, we’re so happy we did.”

Again, I haven’t had lots of those conversations, but a few. And they’re immensely humbling. The column in question wasn’t necessarily even a particularly good one (in my own highfalutin evaluation!), or I might be struggling to recall which column they’re even referencing… but that doesn’t really matter of course. I was just the butterfly, flapping a wing somewhere, which God in his Providence was able to use for good. It could have been any of a hundred or a thousand people, easily able to write columns as good or better than mine… but what an honor, right? To be permitted to be the butterfly. To be of use for some larger divine purpose far beyond my ken. Of course, that can be any of us, on any ordinary day. I find it fun to muse sometimes that “perhaps the most objectively important thing I ever did, in a cosmic and providential sense, was some little service rendered or stray thought expressed, which in my own mind had no real importance at all.” Perhaps.

I’m not suggesting that we should meander through life doing nothing-in-particular. Quite the contrary! We should be as energetic as possible in looking for places to put in an oar. The Apostles certainly were. But realistically, our best-laid plans often go awry. And when they do… well, who knows? God can do a lot sometimes with failed attempts and mangled plans.

Keep at it, laborers! Still plenty of harvest left to bring in.