Harvest is still on my mind. The obsession was fueled this week when I heard about a church that hadn’t held a VBS in years, but did so this summer. By the way, that’s all about new leadership. Anyway, they had something like over 60 kids attend every day, and get this . . . over 30 came to faith in Christ. Wow!
My thought when I heard the story was, “the soil was really right there. It was God’s time.” Then I remembered a statement I’d read just a few days earlier:
They will decide whether or not to return before they ever hear the sermon.
What lingers with me about the harvest is this: while we can’t usually control the quality of the “soil” (Matthew 13) in a person’s heart, we can help amend that soil. How? By reaching out, befriending, welcoming, preparing our facilities to receive others, thinking of others rather than ourselves, making our places including church outsider friendly, shaping our talk to fit visitors rather than regulars, serving in community arenas outside our churches, always thinking about and really caring about the reason Jesus died.
And as I thought about the community mentioned above, I realized the pastor there had done that very thing . . . he had not only sown seed, but through his leadership, he and the congregation had been used by God to amend the soil.
Let’s take a look at ourselves . . . okay? Let’s ask God to shape who we are in Him, regardless of the cost, so that we are not just sowers, but also amenders of the soil around us. And let’s not carelessly contribute to hard soil becoming harder, untended soil becoming more weedy or rocky soil becoming even less productive.
They will decide whether or not to return before they ever hear the sermon. | 
