Our Sunday School has been anticipating September.
We sing “Happy Birthday” each week and hand out a small token of love to each birthday person. In our congregation, September has the highest number of birthdays. When I was teaching, September also had the highest number of birthdays year after year.
What’s up with that? I have my own opinion that I formulated back in my late teens. I believe many of the September birthdays may have been a result of Christmas and New Year celebrations. And, we’ll leave that right there.
Historical Significance of the Harvest
September on the Gregorian calendar is represented by the number 9. The number 9 in Jewish/Hebrew numerological interpretation states, “The number 9 symbolizes divine completeness or conveys the meaning of finality.”
Harvest is both an end of the growing cycle, and simultaneously a replenishing of new seed for the next growing cycle. Harvest is the culmination of a process that has been hidden for weeks and months. Growth occurs even though there is very little evidence of the final full fruit. It is important to remember that harvest goes through the phases of planting, development, maturation, and then the delivery.
The farmer is invested in the harvest long before the reaping begins. The farmer prepares the ground, plants the seeds, protects and nurtures the seedlings, and watches the plants to identify the “fullness of time” to bring in the harvest.
What About You?
Have you ever thought about your life as a crop? Who is the farmer and what is the seed? What is the growing process time frame? What will the harvest produce? Jesus’ parable about the “Sower and Seed” (Matthew 13:1-23) is a great analogy of the fullness of harvest based upon the condition of the ground and the growing environment.
Where are you in anticipating the “fullness of time” and harvest in your life? Do you know what seed (potential) God has planted in you? Are you aware of the condition of your spiritual and emotional health to support growth? September can be a month of spiritual reflection and asking, “What is coming to fullness/birth?”
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- What has God planted in you?
- What has been developing quietly within you?
- What may be nearing the fullness of time and harvest in your life?
Let’s anticipate whatever is planted within us comes to birth in the fullness of time to harvest. May the harvest produce a bumper crop that is shared with the people in our lives. May there be seeds planted from our harvest into the lives of those in need of life-giving potential.
May this seed, plant, and harvest cycle be nurtured so that we eventually fulfill Habakkuk 2:14, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (NIV).
What a harvest that will be!
For more thought-provoking topics, tune in to Hope 100.7.
God bless you. Stay hopeful! ❤️
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