On a hot summer day my dad was notorious for making all of us kids clean house as if the President of the United States was coming over for dinner. I can remember those days as if they were yesterday. My Dad would raise all the windows in the house and turn on some down home blues. We kids would clean and sing the blues like there was no tomorrow. Those were some good times…really they were, seriously. You younger folks may not know what a record player is but in those days my dad would pull out an LP, throw it on the turn table and we would work while listening to some Bobby Blue Bland. One of my favorite songs that he sang was called “Farther On Up the Road.”
This may be trivial but I’m going to mention it anyway. Bobby Blue Bland’s single “Farther On Up the Road” hit the charts in 1957 and it made number one on the R&B music charts within the first month that it came out. There is a stanza in the song that goes like this, I think this part of the song is the reason why the song was so popular, check it out “You gotta reap just what you sow; that old saying is true. You gotta reap just what you sow; that old saying is true. Just like you mistreat someone, someone's gonna mistreat you.” Picture a 10 year old kid with a mop in one hand and a broom in the other singing with all the passion he could muster “someone’s gonna hurt you just like the way you hurt me.”
I’m not sure Bobby Blue knew that he was actually singing scripture but then again being from the south he most likely did. There is a passage in Galatians that communicate these same lyrics that Bobby Blue sang so passionately. Check this out Galatians6:7-8 “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” Paul is saying in scripture exactly what Bobby was saying in song. You get back exactly what you give out. This biblical principal is often referred to as “the law of sowing and reaping.”
The interesting truth about sowing seed or scattering seed is this you always reap more than what you sowed or planted. Think about that? Imagine plating a row of 10 tomato seeds and only reaping 10 tomatoes. With all the work of tilling the ground and sowing seed you wouldn’t be very motivated to plant tomatoes. Would you? The truth is each individual seed could produce 10 or more tomatoes. So in actuality and I’m not really using science here, just approximating for effect, 10 tomato seeds could yield almost 100 tomatoes or more. So then it’s true you don’t just reap what you sow but you reap more than what you sowed. Now if we apply this truth to our life actions. The law of sowing and reaping can be pretty scary or rewarding depending on what seeds you are planting with your life. Imagine applying this principal to being a friendly person or financially supporting a ministry, spending time with the broken hearted etc the possibilities are endless.
Ok then armed with this truth lets look at the second part of the verse mentioned above Gal6:8 “For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” So then Paul gives to us the nugget of truth we need to learn from this metaphor of sowing and reaping. Whenever we do something in life we must take action with the proper motivation. Paul says as much here in the passage. If I sow seed with carnal or fleshly desires as my motivation then that action will produce corruption. However the other side of that coin looks a lot better. If I sow to the spirit that is if my actions has at their core godly sincere love as the motivation then I will reap life everlasting. My dad use to say to me when I was much younger “you can fool some people some of the time but you can’t fool God none of the time.” By that he was saying and you have to know my Dad, “son I really don’t know your heart in this thing but God does.”
We are never too old to learn but we are old enough to forget. My prayer is that I will never forget this principle of sowing and reaping. Although sowing good actions are often very difficult and it seems that it takes forever for that crop to come in but when the harvest finally does come it is always awesome. Let me leave you with a quote from Mother Teresa that does a good job of tying up our discussion.
“Its not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters” Mother Teresa
