Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9
Losing Heart, Not Losing Energy
Paul is closing out a hard letter. He's spent five chapters arguing with a church that had started adding requirements to the gospel, and now he's on practical ground, telling them to "carry each other's burdens," to restore the person caught in sin gently, and to "share all good things" with whoever teaches them. Then comes the sowing and reaping paragraph, where he says a person reaps what they sow, and that whoever sows to please the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.
Verse 9 is what he says next, and the weariness he's talking about isn't the kind a nap fixes. The word means losing heart, going slack, giving up on something because it doesn't appear to be working, which is a different problem from being tired.
He also knows where it happens, and it happens in doing good. You don't lose heart sowing a field for one afternoon. You lose heart in the sixth month of carrying somebody's burden and watching them make the same decision over again.
So he answers it with a farmer's timeline. The harvest comes "at the proper time," which isn't the same as soon and isn't the same as whenever you ask. A farmer doesn't get to pick the harvest date, and that's simply how growing works. Paul is promising that the timing belongs to God and that the harvest is certain, and he's careful not to promise that the good you're doing will show results on the day you need to see them.
I wrote about the physical side of tiredness in The List Goes Down, where Isaiah promises strength to keep walking without fainting. Isaiah is answering what happens in the body, and Paul is answering what happens in the heart.
Sow Again This Week
Some days that's showing up for the same friend who is still in the same mess. Some days it's cooking a meal for a household that has stopped saying thank you. Some days it's praying for a grown child who isn't calling back. Some days it's money you give away and never hear about again.
As Johann Hari wrote in Stolen Focus, "when you practice moving at a speed that is compatible with human nature, and you build that into your daily life, you begin to train your attention and focus." A harvest grows at that kind of speed, and we live at a much faster one, which is where losing heart starts. We plant in the spring, and then we walk back out to the field in the spring to see whether anything has come up yet.
Paul attaches one condition to the whole sentence. "If we do not give up." So the question this week is whether you sowed, and not whether the field looks any different than it did.
My encouragement to you today is to think of the good you've been doing that hasn't paid off yet, and to do it once more this week without walking back out to check the field.
Prayer
Father, we get tired in the good work, and we get tired because nothing seems to be growing. Thank you that the harvest is yours and the timing is yours. Help us to keep sowing where we can't see. Give us the patience of a farmer, and give us your Spirit where our own heart runs out. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.