Reap what we sow.  This is one of God’s laws.

I have heard it said, “Let them be; they need to sow their wild oats.”  I have thought of the statement many times when it is used, usually with the young.  Some laugh, thinking it funny young people and even older people should do whatever they feel and not reap the consequences of their behavior.  I have often wondered who came up with this statement for it is contrary to God’s law of reaping and sowing.

As I write this, I know of six couples who are living together.  Some of these people are young and some are in their 50’s.  I know of one couple who lives down the highway from me.  They have had multiple partners.  First one and then another, and always without the bond of marriage.  Living with one foot outside the door.  They no longer blush at such arrangements. Young or old.

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes:  but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”    Ecclesiastes 11:9

This sin, as well as many others, if not repented of and abandoned, will lead one’s soul to hell.  It is so easy to get caught up in this world, and those I have known who have lived this lifestyle later regretted it.  They knew they were wrong, but “everyone else was doing it.”

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen to oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”      ~ Alexander Pope

We must remember the law of God and of sowing and reaping.  If we are led to believe otherwise, we are being deceived.

“Many years ago, Irish farmers went on the theory that they could eat all the big potatoes and keep the small potatoes for re-seeding. They did this for some time.  They ate the big potatoes; they planted the small potatoes.

A new understanding of the laws of nature came to them; nature reduced all the potatoes to the size of marbles.  The Irish farmers learned through bitter experience that they could not keep the best things in life only for themselves and use the leftovers for seeding.  The laws of life decreed that the harvest would reflect the planting process.

Planting small potatoes is still a common practice, even today.  We still try to keep the best things of life for ourselves and plant leftovers.  We expect that by some crazy twist of the laws of nature our selfishness will reward us with unselfishness.  Is this not true in terms of time, personal talents, service to others, sharing our faith, and living as God’s Word asks us to live?  We need to remember what the Irish farmers learned – we cannot eat big potatoes and still keep on having them through the years.

Truly the harvest reflects the planting season.  So the question comes back to each one of us . . . What am I planting?  What is the harvest in my life now?  Or the harvest that is yet to be in years ahead?  For it can only be that, “as you sow, so you reap.”

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked:  for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”    (Galatians 6:7)

“But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.”    (II Corinthians 9:6)

Eileen Light