Cosecha is the Spanish word for harvest. This last month we planted over 1000 fruit trees. When planting trees there are some basic principles that are very important to follow. If you plant the trees too high and expose the roots they might die. If they don’t get enough water or if the soil is void of nutrients they will die. Caring for the trees is important.

But in the long run, there is nothing you can actually do to make a tree grow. You can only create the environment that keeps it from dying. God has written its ability to grow into the DNA in each seed. (plants have DNA right? Right?)

In the same way, we can love people, share the word with them and pray consistently for them. But we really can’t make them grow in the Lord. This kind of thinking rings true with Jesus’ parable of the soils in Matthew 13. Some people’s hearts are hard, others are shallow. Sometimes the word falls on the side of the path and gets eaten by birds. All of these things happen in ministry all the time.

The encouragement comes from recognizing that our responsibility is to scatter seed, not to cause growth. I see myself sometimes leaning over a little sprout, tugging on it with a pair of pliers or dousing it in compost till it can’t breathe.

But God has not called us to this. He has called us to love him and to share him with others. There are definitely some basic principles that should be followed in order to disciple people effectively, but in the end we have no more power over their growth than we do over the seeds in the soil.

In John 4 Jesus says “Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and 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.”

Or as Paul says in 1 Corinthians “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

I love this phrase: only God, who makes things grow.