Daily Bible Reading
To prevent the frustration of falling behind, which most of us tend to do when following a Bible reading plan, each month of this plan gives you only twenty-five readings. Today we start a few “free days” . We encourage you to catch up on any readings you may have missed this month.
If you have finished the month’s readings, you can use these final days of the month to study the passages that challenged or intrigued you.
Daily Devotion
Am I Ready to be a Laborer?
In Matthew 9:38 Jesus instructs His disciples to pray for the Lord to send out laborers or workers into His harvest. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.”
What does it mean to be a laborer or worker? In my job, I interact with many different trades in order to complete construction of a building. Trades like plumbers, electricians, carpenters, drywall finishers, painters, etc. All of the trades that I have worked with have laborers, the new workers that do not have the experience or knowledge to do their job. If willing to submit to their superiors they will have the opportunity to learn the trade. Now usually this involves some dirty, menial and monotonous tasks. Hauling lumber, digging trenches, drilling holes, moving buckets, the tasks that suck the excitement right out of your day. Usually as the more experienced workers are doing the exciting jobs that bring the construction to completion. Whatever the trade the laborer is the “low spot”.
Now in this scripture, laborers is speaking of field workers and I believe a much similar position. Let’s picture the harvest. It’s not a time of planting the seed, not the time for watering of keeping the fields safe, it is a time to remove the plants from the ground. Now I have never been a farmer so I hope I am interpreting the harvest correctly. The word harvest means reaping which is to cut or gather a crop, and this is what Jesus needs people for, cutting and gathering. Nothing fancy or eye catching just cut and gather. It’s seems to me the only skill needed is how to cut efficiently so you don’t get tired halfway through the day. Definitely not glamorous or flashy, but needed.
The Greek word for pray ye is also used as “I want for myself”. Maybe, I need to want to go back to being a labor, or ready to do whatever lowly task I can get in order to further the harvest. The harvest. Cut and gather. The harvest is ready but the workforce is small, so small that Jesus tells us to pray earnestly or pray with a desire to be a laborer myself. He wants me to have a personal investment in His harvest. Teach me Lord, just as a skilled tradesman teaches his willing laborers, let me see the future and not focus on the seemingly monotonous tasks of today. The harvest.
~Dominic Couvion