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OPEN ‘I’ = OPEN HEART

Everyone within the agricultural farming community looks forward to harvest time with great excitement. All their months of waiting after preparing the ground, sowing, watering, etc. phases are coming to a conclusion of harvest time. Their first priority when the crops are ripe is to bring in the harvest as quickly as possible, less a change of weather, i.e., heavy rain, destroy the crops. Everything else is put on hold and every able-bodied man, woman and even the older children are mobilized to bring in the harvest. Once the ripened crops are successfully harvested, there is great celebration in the farming community.

In Jn 4:35, Jesus told His disciples: “I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” He wants them to open their eyes to the correct focus. They were focused on the wrong object, and therefore, not able to discern that God’s gift of salvation for mankind had arrived. The disciples had not understood that Jesus came to harvest (redeem) precious people and their thoughts of “harvest” were still very much related to agriculture. The harvest fields for precious people have been ripe since the arrival of Jesus the Messiah into the world. And today, Jesus the Lord and Saviour continues to ask us to open our eyes to focus on the heartbeat of God the Father – the redemption of lost people who need the Lord (Rom 10:13). Our God is a missionary God and He wants us to open our eyes with our missionary hearts to the ripe harvest of precious lost people who are all around us – everywhere.

Jesus the Messiah is seeking for more workers for his harvest field and He is still issuing the clarion call to us, His disciples, to be involved (Lk 10:2).

Isobel Kuhn wrote:

I believe that (in) each generation God has called enough men & women to evangelize all the unreached tribes of the earth …
Everywhere I go, I constantly meet men and women who say to me, “When I was young I wanted to be a missionary but I got married instead,” or, “My parents dissuaded me” or some such thing.
No, it is not God who does not call. It is man who will not respond.

Will we respond to Jesus’ call to us to open our eyes to His harvest for precious lost people who are everywhere? Or is our ‘I’ not open because we are focused on other things? (Mk 4:19)