MORE TIME

Written by Ron Hutchcraft,  "A Word With You"
Sent by Daily Wisdom

A LITTLE MORE TIME TO HARVEST

There's a stretch of nights in the Fall when the moon is absolutely
incredible! It's usually in October - harvest time for farmers. And when it's
full moon time, you can see this huge, brilliant, yellowish moon rising in the
eastern sky. It just makes you stop and almost catch your breath. I think it
was in the days before electricity that farmers started calling it a harvest
moon. With so much depending on the harvest and so little time to bring it in,
every hour had to count. And the days never seemed quite long enough to get it
all in. So a bright full moon was more than just a beautiful view ... it
meant something much more important. With that extra light, God was giving
them a little more time to harvest!

It could be that you and I are living right now in the light of a spiritual
harvest moon - to bring to Jesus some of the lives around us that He died to
rescue. Maybe that's why He's giving you a little more time.

There's a powerful illustration of this in our word for today from the Word of
God in Luke 13:6ff. Then (Jesus) told this parable: 'A man had a fig tree,
planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find
any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now
I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut
it down! Why should it use up the soil?'

'Sir', the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around
it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it
down.' I wonder how many of our lives this parable is describing? Jesus comes
looking for some fruit from a believer's life especially in the form of some
people you've introduced to Him. He finds none. Why should He leave us here
any longer, just soaking up the nutrients in our spiritual soil? But the
answer comes, Give him/give her a little more time to make a difference. By
virtue of the fact that you and I are still here, Jesus has decided to let us
have at least a little more time to take some people to heaven with us.

I'll tell you, you feel it deeply when the time for you to bring someone home
runs out when harvest time is over. I remember my high school friend Cathy. We
never dated we were just good friends. One morning, during my freshman year of
college, I remember waking up to a news story that mentioned her name. The
night before, a gunman had walked into the Student Union at the university
Cathy attended, pulled out a gun, and shot her in cold blood.

Suddenly, I was out of chances to tell Cathy about how she could go to heaven.
We had talked about everything except Jesus! I had slept through the harvest,
and time had run out. That's why the Bible says that when it comes to talking
about Jesus, "Make the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:4).  This
spiritual harvest business is urgent stuff. Harvest always is. You know the
opportunity doesn't last long ... you drop everything to bring it in, and if
you wait, you miss it. God wants us to feel that kind of urgency about telling
the people we know about the Man who loved them enough to die for them. We
never know when their time or our time will run out.

So, like the farmer toiling feverishly in the extended light of a harvest
moon, God has given you a little more time to bring in someone His Son died
for. Don't keep putting it off. Don't let your life be so full of uneternal
stuff that you miss the mission that matters most. Someone you know
desperately needs Jesus...and Jesus has given you a little more time to
bring them home.