Jesus looked over a sea of broken, searching people and saw something more than chaos and need—He saw a ripe field. He told His disciples that what lay before them was not a problem to avoid but a harvest waiting to be gathered, yet with a painful shortage of workers. Today, He is still saying the same thing to us, inviting us to see our world not as a burden, but as an opportunity bursting with eternal significance.

Seeing What Jesus Sees

Matthew tells us, “Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few’” (Matthew 9:37). Just before this, we’re told that Jesus was moved with compassion because the crowds were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” He did not merely see statistics, culture wars, or hard hearts—He saw people who needed a Savior. If we are honest, we often see inconvenience where He sees a harvest; we see resistance where He sees readiness.

Jesus invites us to put on His lenses. He says in John 4:35, “Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ripe for harvest.” That means your workplace, your school, your family, your neighborhood are not spiritual wastelands; they are fields in season. Some may look rough, rocky, or overgrown, but the Lord of the harvest is already at work beneath the surface. Our role begins with lifting up our eyes—choosing to see the cashier, the coworker, the classmate, the neighbor as someone God is pursuing.

Becoming an Answer to Your Own Prayer

Jesus doesn’t just describe the harvest; He commands a response: “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:38). The first step is prayer. Not generic prayer, but a targeted, faith-filled plea: “Lord, raise up workers. Open doors. Stir hearts. Send laborers.” When we pray like this, our hearts start aligning with His, and our priorities begin to shift. We stop merely complaining about the darkness and start asking to shine in it.

But here is the beautiful, risky part: so often, those who pray become the very answer to their own prayer. Isaiah heard the Lord ask, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us?” and he replied, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8). Romans 10:14 presses the question: “And how can they hear without someone to preach?” You may not stand behind a pulpit, but God can use your voice, your story, your hospitality, your text messages, your courage to invite, to share, to listen, to explain the hope of the gospel in Jesus Christ.

Sowing, Reaping, and Trusting the Lord of the Harvest

The idea of a “plentiful” harvest can feel intimidating. We can think, “I don’t know enough,” or “I’m not gifted like others.” But Scripture reminds us that the Lord never asked us to be the hero—only to be faithful. Paul wrote, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Some days you sow a seed with a simple word or act of kindness. Other days you water what someone else planted. God alone gives the increase.

Jesus also promised, “He who reaps draws his wages and gathers fruit for eternal life” (John 4:36). Nothing done for Him is wasted. A question asked, a tract given, a Bible study started, a child prayed with, a sinner gently confronted, a friend invited to church—these are all harvest moments. Galatians 6:9 encourages us, “And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” The harvest belongs to the Lord, but He has chosen to place a sickle in your hand.

Lord of the harvest, thank You for letting me be part of Your work; open my eyes to the fields around me today, and send me—and use me—as a willing worker for Your glory.

We confess, do we not, that we have a Christian responsibility to believe God's Word and to obey God's Truth? Then we should accept the fact that it is our task to practice the Christian virtues in the power of the Holy Spirit as we await the coming of Him who will come. The great spiritual needs around us should drive us back to the gospel records of the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus. When evil men crucified Jesus, killed Him, they had no power to change Him. They could not alter the Person or the personality of the Son of God. Putting Him on the cross did not drain away any of His divine affection for a lost race. The best thing we know about our Lord and Savior is that He loves the sinner. He has always loved the outcast-and for that we should be glad, for we, too, were once outcasts! We are descended from that first man and woman who failed God and disobeyed. They were cast out of the garden, and God set in place a flaming sword to keep them from returning!

Ye both had compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your possessions. - Hebrews 10:34

The possession of the enduring substance of Christ lifts us above all loss or change. "Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods," says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaking to his hearers of some afflictions and persecutions which have long faded out of memory. We know not what the circumstances were to which he refers. Evidently there had been some pretty stringent and severe persecution of Christians, which had led to large financial losses. " Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods." How came it that they were so turned about from man’s usual attitude as to welcome what most people resist, or at least regret? How came it? Why - "knowing that ye had yourselves for a better and an enduring possession." It does not matter much to the man that has vaults on vaults full of sacks of bullion whether a few shillings may be lost in the course of a day’s work. It does not matter much to the merchant who has his warehouse piled with goods though one or two day’s transactions may be unprofitable. And if we have the durable riches in the possession of our own selves, we can afford to look - and we shall look - with comparatively quiet hearts on the going of all that can go, and be able to bear losses and sorrows, and "all the ills that flesh is heir to," in an altogether different fashion from what we should do if we could not fall back upon the wealth within, and feel that nothing can touch that.

If we rightly understood the mission of loss, pain, or sorrow, and that each was intended to make us possess more fully the only true riches - that each was meant to make us better, more masters of ourselves, and enriched by such possession- we should not so often murmur or faint when the blows come, nor be so ready to exclaim, "Oh! the mysteries of Providence!" but rather be quick to say, " All things work together for good to them that love God." For, if my "loss" of outward things makes me "gain" in patience, in refinement, in fixed faith in Jesus Christ, in quiet submission to Him, then I enter the item on the wrong page if I put it upon the " losses" side of the book. I should put it on the "profits" side; for it profits a man more to gain himself than to gain or keep the whole world.

So the right understanding of what our wealth is, and the right understanding of the relation of sorrow and pain and loss to the true wealth in ourselves, would make us not only take patiently, but "joyfully," all possible disaster and loss. And we may come to reproduce that heroism of glad faith which the old prophet showed when he sang, "Though the fig tree shall not blossom, and there be no fruit in the vine; though the labour of the olive shall fail, and there be no meat in the field; though the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stall, yet shall I rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation."