Not slackening just before the harvest

"And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." Galatians 6:9

A short verse, and two expressions that do not mean the same thing. "Weary" and "faint." Paul uses them one after the other on purpose.

To be weary is what happens inside: the wearing down, the discouragement, the sense that none of it is working. It is involuntary. Nobody decides to be tired.

To faint is what happens next, and it is a decision: you stop. You no longer make the gesture. Between the two there is a gap, and the whole of ordinary Christian life is played out inside that gap.

Because Paul does not promise you will not grow weary. There is no verse that promises that. He says: the harvest is coming, provided the weariness does not become a stop. You can reap exhausted. You cannot reap after leaving the field.

"In due season" — the Greek points to a proper, fitting, ripened moment. Not soon. Not when you can't take any more. At the hour the thing is ready. And nobody harvests twice in one season to speed things along.

Here is something experience teaches and the text assumes: discouragement rarely comes at the beginning. It comes late. You hold for six months, a year, two years, and it is exactly when the ground starts working that you cannot go on. The temptation to quit is almost always a proximity signal, not a failure signal.

Today. Do not ask God to remove the tiredness — that is not what He promised. Ask Him to keep your hand on the task. And shrink the task if you must: ten minutes of prayer every day for a year beats two hours a day for three weeks.

What matters in a harvest is not the sower's strength. It is that he is still there in the right month.

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