Is it failure, or a different harvest?

Today’s Proverb: He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. Proverbs 10:5

Follow-through. Commitments. Seeing a project through to completion. Sowing and reaping. As adults we know that when we live these bits of wisdom we are successful. However, if we struggle with these areas we tend to struggle with life’s challenges.

Initially, I had planned to extol the virtues of planning. And there are obvious virtues in planning a project or goal because it enables us to see them through.

But, sometimes our goals — even with a great deal of prayer and planning and hard work — seem to go awry. They take a turn that is unexpected and confusing. We feel we’ve let our Heavenly Father down. We just weren’t good enough to see the project through to harvest.

What if that’s not true? What if something else is at work? Something amazing?

What if?

What if that well-meaning project or goal was our Father’s means to a different end? What if He needs to show us something important, a harvest we cannot seem to fathom on our own and He is using this crop to get us to the place where He can speak to us? What if He needs to begin with what we know, so that He can take us to a new vista of understanding?

What do I mean by this? I want to encourage all of us that when a well-prayed, well-thought out project never comes to “harvest,” know that sometimes our Father had a different crop to gather.

Look at the “failure” and ask the Holy Spirit to show you if you actually failed, or there was another “harvest.” See what Father shows us. We might be blessed in ways we never thought possible.

May we gather the crops our Father intends, my friends.

Proverbs 10:5 Tree of Life Bible Society, Tree of Life Version – TLV, #tlvbible, #tlvproverbs