"Between the Planting and Harvest" - 08/31/2026

It's the last day of August, and I still can't quite believe it. School has already been back in session for two weeks, life has found its normal rhythm again, and yet one more summer weekend is waiting for us before Labor Day closes it out. This time of year always does something to me. I start seeing familiar faces return to the pews after their summer trips, and I can feel the church waking back up. Right now my desk is covered in plans for the fall, calendars, sign-up sheets, program outlines, all building toward our Kick Off Sunday on the second Sunday of September. And if I'm honest, underneath all that planning is a simple prayer I keep repeating: Lord, let people come, and let them grow.


Between the Planting and the Harvest

Scripture
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
- 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 (NIV)


Reflection
Out on the fields around us right now, the harvest is coming in. Combines have been running since sunup, wheat and grain piled into trucks, months of someone else's patient work finally showing itself. It's a good time to be a farmer, and a good time to remember that most of what makes a harvest possible happened long before anyone could see it.

Paul knew something about that when he wrote to the Corinthians. They were arguing over which leader deserved the credit for their growing faith, as if a church could be grown the way you'd build a barn. Paul cuts through it plainly: I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. The word he uses, αὐξάνω (auxano), is the same word for a seed swelling underground or a child getting taller. Nobody hovers over a seed willing it to sprout faster. It grows because that's what God built it to do, on its own timeline, in the dark, out of sight.

I think about that as I sit here surrounded by fall plans. The fields outside our windows are bringing in a harvest right now, but inside these walls, we're only just now putting seeds in the ground. New programs, new invitations, new faces we hope to welcome. I won't get to see most of the growing. That part isn't mine to control anyway.

So here's what I keep coming back to: plant well, water faithfully, and let the rest belong to God. Whatever you're sowing today, a hard conversation, a new habit, a prayer for someone you love, it's already at work below the surface, doing what only God can make it do.


Prayer
Lord, thank You for the harvest happening around us and the planting still ahead of us. Give me patience for what I cannot rush and honesty about what isn't mine to control. Let me tend what You've given me to tend, and trust You for everything I cannot yet see. Amen.