Lets just say that when we were asked to harvest a rice field during month 3 I did not think I would be writing a blog about how Jesus pursues, but God teaches in the most amazing ways.
You heard me correctly. This month we were assigned to live in a Thai village 3 hours outside of the closest city on the border of Burma. We live with host families and were asked to help harvest their rice fields. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
After one day of harvesting a small, small portion of their rice fields, I will NEVER look at a simple piece of rice ever the same.
Harvesting rice in America is one thing. It might have a large combine or maybe a milling machine. But harvesting rice in a Thai village looked a little more like…getting dressed head to toe in hot clothes. You have thick pants, 2 layers of socks (one so leeches don’t get through), one t-shirt, one oversized men’s button up shirt, optional neck scarf, and one large rice hat. Once dressed you walk about 15 minutes through the village to arrive at the rice fields. After you slip on some work gloves that are more like poorly knit mittens, you grab a rice hook, which looks like something out of a Slasher movie then you head out to your section of the field.
The repetitive action of hooking a clump of rice stalks and slashing through it with your rice hook then placing it in stacks continues on and on for hours. The amount of cut stalks numbers over millions, the amount of cut stacks numbers over thousands, the amount of workers slashing through this section is over 25 on any given day, the amount of sections numbers over hundreds. This has been one day. There are still more steps to be done to this rice. This has just been the cutting stage.
I will never look at one piece of rice the same ever again.
See, as we are hooking, clumping, slashing, and stacking, the whole time the rice seed is clinging to the stalk by what seems like a thread. The slightest bump will knock the rice seed to the ground, which is lost in this rice field to be left for the animals instead of eaten by the villagers.
However, all this work and precision never stops these villagers from planting year after year and harvesting year after year. But again, I will never look at one piece of rice the same ever again. I can look at just one little piece and think about all the work that went into that ONE piece of rice. Maybe that is what the villagers see. They see that each piece of rice is valuable for feeding their families and/or being weighed for an income to live off of.
Here is where I see Christ. Christ sees that one piece of rice and all that work that went into it and still will never stop planting or harvesting. Christ sees us that way. He sees not as a whole, but as a single important part.
Jesus pursues our hearts in the same way that those villagers pursue that one rice seed to be harvested. Jesus does not see us as a whole church or a group of people to love or speak to, he sees us individually to whom he wants to speak to just us and love just us.
The rice goes through quite a journey to get to your dinner plate. I have only seen one of the many, many steps that each rice seed passes through before it is made complete as a dinner for you and your family. But isn’t it true how we do the same thing. We go through many steps to get to the men and women God has created us to be. We go through many ups and downs in life, but just like the villagers harvesting, Jesus never leaves us, he always pursues us to get all the way to the end. Jesus desires us to be the finished product. He desires our hearts to be aligned with his heart. He desires us to go along this journey with him so that we may be exactly what we were meant to be.
Rice field to dinner table. Christ is pursuing each one of us to be in a love relationship with him to walk into the people God created us to be.
I continue to look into harvesting verses as we enter into this time of rice harvesting as well as harvesting people for Christ. Join with us in prayer as we are seeing harvesting in a new light. Jesus is pursuing the people of this village, as well as the people of my life. May we each see Christ’s hand in this journey and cling to him like the rice seed clings to the rice stalk.
John 4:35-38 “I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying, ‘One sows, another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
