If you are a mama, you know all about sowing. Your whole days' work is sowing: changing diapers, nursing babies, comforting bumps and bruises, reading Bible stories, cleaning up the millionth accident, praying with kiddos, sharing the gospel and teaching them everything under the sun.
And if all your little ones are still pretty young, you probably haven't reaped much yet. Maybe you have been working at potty training for months, and haven't reaped the reward of a potty trained child. Maybe you have patiently and consistently disciplined tantrums time after time after time recently with seemingly no progress. Maybe you read Bible stories every night and pray several times during the day, and your child still shows no interest in spiritual matters. And these things are pretty little; you are still years away from seeing your child choose to do good for others, seeing them be reborn into a relationship with Christ, or see them be able to help in any significant way around the house or with siblings.
This has been especially hard for me in foster parenting. I taught oldest brother A his letters, but never got to see him read. I have changed thousands of diapers on baby girls J and A, and baby boy A, but never got to see the accomplishment of them being potty trained. I have gotten to share the gospel with all five of the children that have been in our home, but never got to see any of them reborn. But the reaping with these kiddos is different than the reaping that happens with biological or adopted kiddos. In due season, I will reap what I sowed with them, but this will probably not be until Heaven.
What does the Bible say to those of us in the sowing stage of life? Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Do not grow weary, mama. God will reward it. He will give you a harvest to reap. It seems a long way off, but it will also be here before you know it.
If you have ever planted a veggie garden, you know this. In spring this year, the tomatoes seemed so far away. I spent hours in the garden planting, weeding, tilling, composting and fertilizing. All I could think about were all the tomato recipes that I hadn't been able to enjoy since the previous summer and how much I wanted juicy, vine-ripened tomatoes ASAP. In June, we had green tomatoes on the vine for a good month before any chose to ripen. But now we are harvesting. We have tomatoes coming out of our ears, and I have barely any work but to water the garden and pick the tomatoes.
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