The principle of sowing and reaping applies to all aspects of your life. It is a powerful lesson that if followed can lead you to great things, or cause you to suffer. The essence of it is that you will reap what you sow and the decision is yours which path you choose to take.
Consider the process from a farming perspective. A farmer goes out into the field sowing seeds of grain or some other crop. He then watches over it waiting for the sun to warm the soil and the rains to come and keeps it free from pestilence as the crop grows. In due course it comes to the time of the reaping when the farmer brings in the crop and receives the benefit of his effort and time.
Life is much the same as the process followed by the farmer. In your life you will be presented with many situations and opportunities. You will need to make decisions and your choices will determine the outcome. This is similar to the sowing of the grain. Each decision and each choice you make is like the planting of a seed. The seed may be a good seed growing up into a good crop, or it may be a bad seed that brings up weeds. As you continue life’s journey the collection of these seeds, good or bad, grow over time and eventually you reap the crop that has grown from these seeds.
In the bible it says, “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8). Whatever you put into your choices and decisions is what you get back. If you cheat, lie and deceive then you will get back the same. But if you do good and help others, then you too will receive good in kind. This is like a law of the universe and it holds true in everything.
There is a further dimension to this law as well. Consider the farmer again. When he sows he might plant a bag of grain, but when he reaps, if all goes well, he might get thirty, sixty or even one hundred bags of grain from his reaping. It’s the same for you in your life choices. When you choose to do right or wrong you don’t just get the same back, you get back more than you sowed. Again the bible says, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7). You will get back more than you bargained for whether you sow good things or evil.
Now you also must remember that the process of sowing and reaping has a time dimension too. Like the farmer in the field, you don’t sow and immediately reap. It may take a long time before you see the benefit of your sowing. Consider a business. The owner sets up the business, gets the stock, hires staff, trains them, prints brochures, advertises and waits for the customers to come. This doesn’t happen immediately but takes time. There is a lot of sowing that has to occur and a lot of nurturing, fertilising, weeding and watering of the crop before the farmer or the businessman can begin to harvest.
Now there is also the possibility that the farmer’s crop may get washed out from flood, or die in the drought, or be eaten by locusts or be wiped out in many other ways. What should the farmer do next year? Should he give up and not sow a crop in case it happens again? Absolutely not! And it is the same for you when your sowing does not seem to be providing a result. Like the farmer you must continue to sow your seed because the one thing you can absolutely count on is that if you don’t, then you will never reap. As the bumper stick says, “Never, NEVER give up!” Eventually your sowing WILL pay off and you will reap in abundance if you continue to stick at it.
I hope that you found something here to help you or add to your own knowledge. If you have any questions, then please feel free to contact me.
