Harvest Blessings Quotes

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past: For everything under the sun there is a time. This is the season of your awkward harvesting, When the pain takes you where you would rather not go, Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a place You had forgotten you knew from the inside out; And a time when that bitter tree was planted That has grown always invisibly beside you And whose branches your awakened hands Now long to disentangle from your heart. You are coming to see how your looking often darkened When you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love, How deep down your eyes were always owned by something That faced them through a dark fester of thorns Converting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong; You could only see what touched you as already torn. Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning. And your memory is ready to show you everything, Having waited all these years for you to return and know. Only you know where the casket of pain is interred. You will have to scrape through all the layers of covering And according to your readiness, everything will open. May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guide Who can accompany you through the fear and grief Until your heart has wept its way to your true self. As your tears fall over that wounded place, May they wash away your hurt and free your heart. May your forgiveness still the hunger of the wound So that for the first time you can walk away from that place, Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed, And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.

Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day the blueprint of your life would begin to glow on earth, illuminating all the faces and voices that would arrive to invite your soul to growth. Praised be your father and mother, who loved you before you were, and trusted to call you here with no idea who you would be. Blessed be those who have loved you into becoming who you were meant to be, blessed be those who have crossed your life with dark gifts of hurt and loss that have helped to school your mind in the art of disappointment. When desolation surrounded you, blessed be those who looked for you and found you, their kind hands urgent to open a blue window in the gray wall formed around you. Blessed be the gifts you never notice, your health, eyes to behold the world, thoughts to countenance the unknown, memory to harvest vanished days, your heart to feel the world’s waves, your breath to breathe the nourishment of distance made intimate by earth. On this echoing-day of your birth, may you open the gift of solitude in order to receive your soul; enter the generosity of silence to hear your hidden heart; know the serenity of stillness to be enfolded anew by the miracle of your being.

Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over.

The man who sows wrong thoughts and deeds, and prays that God will bless him, is in the position of a farmer who, having sown tares, asks God to bring forth for him a harvest of wheat. That which ye sow, ye reap.

As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: "Love has no ending. "I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, "I'll love till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. "The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, And the first love of the world." But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: "O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. "In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss. "In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy Tomorrow or today. "Into many a green valley Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver's brilliant bow. "O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed. "The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead. "Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer, And Jill goes down on her back. "O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress; Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless. "O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbor With all your crooked heart." It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, And the deep river ran on.

Blessed are you who sow. Every seed you so plant, will grow into bountiful crops for great harvest.

Cultivating an attitude of gratitude begins with counting your blessings. In simpler terms, gratitude is expressing thanks for gifts we receive. Genuine gratitude helps us to see the little things in life that are often overlooked, yet so precious.

As we plant in tears, we shall harvest with joy.

We can all produce good fruits with fertile soil.

Love is the knot you tie in your proverbial rope, to hang on to while God works out His will in your life. You were born to be a blessing.

Friendships are like plowed open fields ready for growth. What we plant is what will grow. If we plant seeds of reassurance, blessing, and love, we reap a great harvest of security. Of course, if we plant seeds of backbiting, questioning, and doubt, we reap a great harvest of insecurity.

Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made. But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures.

Friendships are like plowed open fields ready for growth. What we plant is what will grow. If we plant seeds of reassurance, blessing, and love, we reap a great harvest of security.

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality... The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

There's a difference between an opportunist, and someone who seizes an opportunity. One selfishly harvests the fruits of another's labor, the other strategically helps plant the seeds. The latter can be an asset, the former will always be a leech. That climb to the top is already back breaking enough! Don't carry opportunists up your ladder of success!

When you look out across the fields And you both see the same star Pitching its tent on the point of the steeple — That is the time to set out on your journey, With half a loaf and your mother’s blessing. Leave behind the places that you knew: All that you leave behind you will find once more, You will find it in the stories; The sleeping beauty in her high tower With her talking cat asleep Solid beside her feet — you will see her again. When the cat wakes up he will speak in Irish and Russian And every night he will tell you a different tale About the firebird that stole the golden apples, Gone every morning out of the emperor’s garden, And about the King of Ireland’s Son and the Enchanter’s Daughter. The story the cat does not know is the Book of Ruth And I have no time to tell you how she fared When she went out at night and she was afraid, In the beginning of the barley harvest, Or how she trusted to strangers and stood by her word: You will have to trust me, she lived happily ever after.

A wise mother is the unifying force between father and children; her seed of love produces a harvest of trust.

Thank you for inviting me here today " I said my voice sounding nothing like me. "I'm here to testify about things I've seen and experienced myself. I'm here because the human race has become more powerful than ever. We've gone to the moon. Our crops resist diseases and pests. We can stop and restart a human heart. And we've harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormous super-jets. We've even created new kinds of people, like me. "But everything mankind" - I frowned - "personkind has accomplished has had a price. One that we're all gonna have to pay." I heard coughing and shifting in the audience. I looked down at my notes and all the little black words blurred together on the page. I just could not get through this. I put the speech down picked up the microphone and came out from behind the podium. "Look " I said. "There's a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know what the world needs to know is that we're really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic was than anyone has ever imagined. "I mean I've seen a lot of the world the only world we have. There are so many awesome beautiful tings in it. Waterfalls and mountains thermal pools surrounded by sand like white sugar. Field and field of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside like it's done for hundreds of thousands of years. "I've also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct right now in my lifetime. Just recently I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge worldwide climatic changes caused by... us. We the people." .... "A more perfect union While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want and other people live in subway tunnels Where's the justice of that Kids right here in America go to be hungry every night while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare Where's the General welfare in strip-mining toxic pesticides industrial solvents being dumped into rivers killing everything Domestic Tranquility Ever sleep in a forest that's being clear-cut You'd be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty Yes. I'm using one of the blessings of liberty right now my freedom of speech to tell you guys who make the laws that the very ground you stand on the house you live in the children you tuck in at night are all in immediate catastrophic danger.

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison? Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret. But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written. You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary. And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, And all work is empty save when there is love; And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching. Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil. And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet." But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass; And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving. Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

Soldiers planted like vegetables waiting for the day of harvest. … everything is more intense at night, perfectly beautiful, and when the wind shifts and the reek of rotting meat vanishes for a few blessed minutes you can smell the sweet scent of the countryside.

And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

When the fire in your life is the hottest, stand still, for “later on . . . it produces a harvest” (Heb. 12:11) of blessings.

The problem with churches of all sorts,” he continued, “is that so often they ignore the key teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, like the doctrine of love. So often we ask God to be on our side instead of asking that we be blessed enough to be on his. That said, the wheat and the tares must grow up together, and in the days of harvest they will be separated properly.

The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God’s kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification. In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of kings. The clue to understanding all his dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives he is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ. Sometimes the chiseling process is painful and the discipline irksome, but then the Scripture reminds us: “The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons . . . No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb 12:6-7,11). Only the person who has grasped this can make sense of Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God” (KJV); equally, only he can maintain his assurance of sonship against satanic assault as things go wrong. But he who has mastered the truth of adoption both retains assurance and receives blessing in the day of trouble: this is one aspect of faith’s victory over the world. Meanwhile, however, the point stands that the Christian’s primary motive for holy living is not negative, the hope (vain!) that hereby he may avoid chastening, but positive, the impulse to show his love and gratitude to his adopting God by identifying himself with the Father’s will for him.

Sometimes our blessings are limited. There is a tangible poverty that surrounds us. We are not offered an obvious tapestry of choices. Still, even when the choices seem bleak between a tiger’s teeth or deadly fall -- every moment offers up some third options (the true potentiality within the situation), and it is in our choices (conscious or not) that a future harvest depends.

Who doesn't enjoy a little gardening? As we plant the seeds and remove the weeds we reap a wonderful harvest of blessings. What are the weeds? Anyone or anything that sucks the nutrients from the seeds we have planted. The seeds are our goals, desires, good thoughts and feelings. good works and deeds anything that uplifts us. If we don't keep up on our weeding then our garden will die.

See how God winked at weaknesses and overlooked failures as He poured upon His servants grace and blessing untold. Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah, or whom you will; honor followed honor as harvest follows the seed. The man of God set his heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact and acted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made the difference.

Here the destruction is subtle, and there the body is torn. Here the breaking is perceived, and there the dead unaware carry their putrid remains. All trade in filth, carry their filth one to another, all walk the streets as though the ground did not recoil, all stretch their necks to bite the air, as though the breath had not withdrawn. The seed bursts without a blessing, and the harvest is gathered as if it were food.

To be God-blessed means you’re empowered by Almighty God Himself to prosper and succeed. It means you’re empowered by the Holy Spirit to be exceedingly happy with life and joy in spite of any outside circumstances.

We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us. The gift of the world is our first blessing.

The Manger of Incidentals " We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication. The horror of none of it being alive. No red squirrels, no flowers, not even weed. Nothing that knows what season it is. The stars uninflected by awareness. Miming without implication. We alone see the iris in front of the cabin reach its perfection and quickly perish. The lamb is born into happiness and is eaten for Easter. We are blessed with powerful love and it goes away. We can mourn. We live the strangeness of being momentary, and still we are exalted by being temporary. The grand Italy of meanwhile. It is the fact of being brief, being small and slight that is the source of our beauty. We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.

Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" tO OTIC another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between US the more we shall all have.

It is noted that from 1967 to 1995 essays on negative emotions far outnumbered those on positive emotions in the psychological literature. The ratio was 21:1. Even those supreme perpetrators of pop nihilism, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have a better ratio than psychological literature. They average 12 negative stories to every one that might be construed to be non-negative. Many of their non-negative stories, however, cover success in sports and entertainment. I demand that the purveyors of despair who pretend to be dispassionate observes of the human condition go ahead and disclose that the 10 most beautiful words in the English languages are chimes, dawn, golden, hush, lullaby, luminous, melody, mist, murmuring, and tranquil; that Java sparrows prefer the music of Back over that of Schoenberg; that math experts have determined there are 1/96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes; that the Inuit term for making love is translated as ‘laughing together in bed;' and that according to Buckminster Fuller, “pollution is nothing but resources we’re not harvesting.

She almost laughed. “I think you’re a man who gathers up power like a child gathers up wildflowers in the woods.”   “Responsibility, maybe,” he said. “Not necessarily power.”   “Harder to gather handfuls of lake water or rain,” she said.   “I know,” he said. “I don’t expect to be able to harvest you.

The secular are at this moment in history a great deal more optimistic than the religious – something of an irony, given the frequency with which the latter have been derided by the former for their apparent naivety and credulousness. It is the secular whose longing for perfection has grown so intense as to lead them to imagine that paradise might be realized on this earth after just a few more years of financial growth and medical research. With no evident awareness of the contradiction they may, in the same breath, gruffly dismiss a belief in angels while sincerely trusting that the combined powers of the IMF, the medical research establishment, Silicon Valley and democratic politics could together cure the ills of mankind.... It is telling that the secular world is not well versed in the art of gratitude: we no longer offer up thanks for harvests, meals, bees or clement weather. On a superficial level, we might suppose that this is because there is no one to say ‘Thank you’ to. But at base it seems more a matter of ambition and expectation. Many of those blessings for which our pious and pessimistic ancestors offered thanks, we now pride ourselves on having worked hard enough to take for granted.

When the dogma of the Assumption was defined a friend of mine, a very intelligent Mohammedan, congratulated me on the gesture which the Holy Father had made; a gesture (said he) against materialism. And I think he was right. When our Lord took his blessed Mother, soul and body, into heaven, he did honour to the poor clay of which our human bodies are fashioned. It was the first step towards reconciling all things in heaven and earth to his eternal Father, towards making all things new. "The whole of nature", St Paul tells us, "groans in a common travail all the while. And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery." That transformation of our material bodies to which we look forward one day has been accomplished—we know it now for certain-in her. When the Son of God came to earth, he came to turn our hearts away from earth, Godwards. And as the traveller, shading his eyes while he contemplates some long vista of scenery, searches about for a human figure that will give him the scale of those distant surroundings, so we, with dazzled eyes looking Godwards, identify and welcome one purely human figure close to his throne. One ship has rounded the headland, one destiny is achieved, one human perfection exists. And as we watch it, we see God clearer, see God greater, through this masterpiece of his dealings with mankind.

...imperfections were God's way of demonstrating His perfection and strength in our lives and ... incredible blessings could come through periods of absolute brokenness... It was undeniable to us now that the fruit of such intense toil and heartache was even sweeter when you had to work so hard to harvest it.

Bless you, that you not be taken. Bless you, that you begin in your time and that you end in its fullness. Bless you, in the name of the Redeemer, in my name, against the cruel harvesters of the soul, the takers of life. Bless you, that your life and each life shall be as it is written, for peace is born of completion. - Itkovian

From time immemorial it has been one of the deepest longings of the human heart to strain against the erosion of one’s life, to find a way of living and being that manages to find some stable ground within time, a place from where something eternal can be harvested from our disappearance. This is what all art strives for: the creation of a living permanence.

Can you bow before the Crucified in loving homage, and not wish to see your Monarch master of the world? Out on you if you can pretend to love your Prince, and desire not to see him the universal ruler. Your piety is worthless unless it leads you to wish that the same mercy which has been extended to you may bless the whole world. Lord, it is harvest time, put in thy sickle and reap.

After a while in a very gentle voice he asked, ‘Would you like to leave now? We’ll be better off in the boat.’ ‘All right my pet,’ she said. Awash with forgiveness and with tears still in his eyes he held her two hands tightly and helped her on board. Basking in the warmth of the afternoon they rowed upstream again past the willows and the grass-covered banks. When they reached Le Grillon once more it was not yet six, so, leaving their skiff, they set off on foot towards Bezons across the meadows and past the high poplars bordering the banks. The wide hayfields waiting to be harvested were full of flowers. The sinking sun cast a mantle of russet light over all and in the gentle warmth of the day’s end the fragrance of the grass wafted in on them mingling with the damp smells of the river and filling the air with easy languor and an atmosphere of blessed well-being. He felt soft and unresistant, in communion with the calm splendour of the evening and with the vague, mysterious thrill of life itself. He felt in tune with the all-embracing poetry of the moment in which plants and all that surrounded him revealed themselves to his senses at this lovely restful and reflective time of day. He was sensitive to it all but she appeared totally unaffected. They were walking side by side when suddenly, bored by the silence, she began to sing.

Blessed be the stone masons, for they shall lay bricks of gold on the streets of heaven for their wives to walk upon. Blessed are the sowers and harvesters, for they shall live again in the Garden of Eden. Blessed are the bartenders, for Jesus will serve them. Blessed are the prostitutes, for Jesus will embrace them. Woe unto the pastors who preach hate, for they shall live in eternal hate. Woe unto the pastors who become brutes, for their flocks shall be scattered. Woe unto the Inquisitors, for Jesus will inquire unto them.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life.   6.         Faith activates God - Fear activates the Enemy.   7.         Why don't you start believing that no matter what you have or haven't done, that your best days are still out in front of you.   8.         It's God's will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It's God's will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt.   9.         If we say it long enough eventually we're going to reap a harvest. We're going to get exactly what we're saying.   10.    If you give, you will be blessed.      

Where others only see coal, I see diamonds. Where others only see clouds, I see sunshine. Where others only see storms, I see rainbows. Where others only see thorns, I see roses. Where others only see seeds, I see harvests. Where others only see catapillars, I see butterflies. Where others only see cubs, I see lions. Where others only see darkness, I see stars. Where others only see wood, I see fire. Where others only see sparks, I see flames. Where others only see winters, I see summers. Where others only see frowns, I see smiles. Where others only see sorrows, I see joys. Where others only see nights, I sees days. Where others only see burdens, I see blessings. Where others only see hindrances, I see helpers. Where others only see enemies, I sees friends. Where others only see choas, I sees opportunity. Where others only see losses, I see gains. Where others only see crosses, I sees crowns. Where others only see warriors, I see generals. Where others only see learners, I see teachers. Where others only see followers, I see leaders. Where others only see scholars, I see professors. Where others only see soldiers, I sees commanders. Where others only see preachers, I see popes. Where others only see priests, I see prophets. Where others only see lawyers, I see judges. Where others only see students, I see masters. Where others only see outlaws, I see conquerors.

There are videos and books in her room to entertain her, but Miracolina has to laugh, because just as the harvest camp van had only happy, family-friendly movies, the titles she has to choose from here have a clear agenda as well. They’re all about kids being mistreated, but rising above it, or kids empowering themselves in a world that doesn’t understand them. Everything from Dickens to Salinger—as if Miracolina Roselli could possibly have anything in common with Holden Caulfield. ... Finally a bald middle-aged man comes in with a clipboard and a name tag that just says BOB. “I used to be a respected psychiatrist until I spoke out against unwinding,” Bob tells her after the obligatory introductions. “Being ostracized was a blessing in disguise, though, because it allowed me to come here, where I’m truly needed.” Miracolina keeps her arms folded, giving him nothing. She knows what this is all about. They call it “deprogramming,” which is a polite term for undoing brainwashing with more brainwashing.

Day dreamers often can become night writers...When young I didn't toy with the concept of a glass half full or half empty. I was blessed if I had a glass at all and if it had something in it...If you only water the weeds in your garden what will you eventually harvest?...You will continue to loose a lot of your future potential if you keep living in the past...When writing I'm glad to be able to give my readers characters they can bond with...An author staring out a window is busy writing. He's thinking about how to say what has never been said before...Is there honesty in written fiction? Often the answer is yes if you know where to look. Try the author's heart...I had to care more about where I was going rather than where I had been. Where I was going would have been impossible if I'd chosen not to do it...I chose to not allow circumstances to decide my future. Indeed I am what I chose to become...A writer can communicate his soul and then edit to soften what he intended, sometimes using metaphors as a way to more gently convey a truth. (Walt Biondi)

God, I thank you for my family. I thank you that my parents life for me. I pray for your blessings and that your promises will manifest and bring harvest to my bloodline today. I pray that your love will surround my family members for the rest of their days. Amen.

Praise Him and Thank Him Our prayers for you are always spilling over into thanksgivings. We can’t quit thanking God our Father and Jesus our Messiah for you! Colossians 1:3 MSG Sometimes, life can be complicated, demanding, and busy. When the demands of life leave us rushing from place to place with scarcely a moment to spare, we may fail to pause and say a word of thanks for all the good things we’ve received. But when we fail to count our blessings, we rob ourselves of the happiness, the peace, and the gratitude that should rightfully be ours. Today, even if you’re busily engaged in life, slow down long enough to start counting your blessings. You most certainly will not be able to count them all, but take a few moments to jot down as many blessings as you can. Then, give thanks to the Giver of all good things: God. His love for you is eternal, as are His gifts. And it’s never too soon—or too late—to offer Him thanks. The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy. Mother Teresa The act of thanksgiving is a demonstration of the fact that you are going to trust and believe God. Kay Arthur The game was to just find something about everything to be glad about—no matter what it was. You see, when you’re hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind. Eleanor H. Porter God is worthy of our praise and is pleased when we come before Him with thanksgiving. Shirley Dobson God has promised that if we harvest well with the tools of thanksgiving, there will be seeds for planting in the spring. Gloria Gaither MORE FROM GOD’S WORD Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. 2 Corinthians 9:15 HCSB Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and

When the Lord blesses you with your harvest, those people who were flocking to discourage you will almost seem to disappear into thin air. You might hear a few murmurings of gossip, but not many of them will be able to be happy that you are blessed, so they won’t be swooping in to “check on you” anymore. God has a way of vindicating His children. He has way of closing their mouths. He will not be mocked!            Fear is like a weed. If allowed, it will grow and choke out the power, sound mind and love that God has given you.

We must be intimate with the Word so that we know the authentic from the counterfeit. Counterfeit blessings, like weeds, grow and try to take over. Continue your days, knowing in the promise of seed, harvest time will produce what you are believing for. There are many factors to consider when sowing the Word. Some of your seeds may be stolen away before they are given a chance to germinate. Therefore, you need the Word sown in your heart so solidly that the enemy couldn’t possibly steal away all of it. You will have begun the perpetual process of sowing and reaping the promises of God that continues to produce harvests, for all of your days on the earth.

Only Father observed this tradition to the letter. Mother and we, the children just made the blessing over the etrog - a perfect lemon from Palestine - and the lulav - a palm branch, a sprig of willow and myrtle - every morning for eight days. Father went to the synagogue every day and made those prayers there. Sukkoth being a harvest festival, we blessed these symbolic fruits and grains of the land of Israel.

19When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow—in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. 20When you beat down the fruit of your olive trees, do not go over them again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. 21When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not pick it over again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. 22Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment.

Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this. “When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.” “God bless the reading of his Word.

Prayer Declaration Truly it is more blessed to give than to receive. I will honor You with the firstfruits of my increase. I will bring my tithes and offerings to Your storehouse. Let the windows of heaven be opened over my life. I will sow into good ground, and You will enable me to reap an abundant harvest. Let my prayers and giving come up as a memorial before You. I will minister to You, Lord, with my substance.

So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up” (Gal. 6:9 NLT).

I HAVE WRITTEN LARGELY with reference to students spending an unreasonably long time in gaining an education; but I hope I shall not be misunderstood in regard to what is essential education. I do not mean that a superficial work should be done, that may be illustrated by the way in which some portions of the land are worked in Australia. The plow was put into the soil to the depth of only a few inches, the ground was not prepared for the seed, and the harvest was meager, corresponding to the superficial preparation that was given to the land. God has given inquiring minds to youth and children. Their reasoning powers are entrusted to them as precious talents. It is the duty of parents to keep the matter of their education before them in its true meaning: for it comprehends many lines. They should be used in the service of Christ for the uplifting of fallen humanity. Our schools are the Lord’s special instrumentality to fit up the children and the youth for missionary work. Parents should understand their responsibility, and help their children to appreciate the great blessings and privileges that God has provided for them in educational advantages. But their domestic education should keep pace with their education in literary lines. In childhood and youth, practical and literary training should be combined, and the mind stored with knowledge. Parents should feel that they have solemn work to do, and should take hold of it earnestly. They are to train and mold the characters of their children. They should not be satisfied with doing a surface work. Before every child is opened up a life involved with highest interests; for they are to be made complete in Christ through the instrumentalities which God has furnished. The soil in the heart should be preoccupied, the seeds of truth should be sown there in the earliest years. If parents are careless in this matter, they will be called to account for their unfaithful stewardship. Children should be dealt with tenderly and lovingly, and taught that Christ is {10} their personal Saviour, and that by the simple process of giving their hearts and minds to Him, they become His disciples.

TRAGIC RACISM HERETOFORE IGNORED Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all. Proverbs 22:2 Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was a racial eugenicist, a proponent of the idea that through birth control, abortion, and sterilization of the “unfit” we could create a “cleaner” human race and enable “the cultivation of the better racial elements.” She actually addressed this with the Ku Klux Klan. Yet far from repudiating Sanger, liberal leaders defend her. Hillary Clinton expresses great admiration for her; Barack Obama praises Planned Parenthood and asks God to bless what they do; the New York Times has mentioned Sanger as a replacement for Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill. When the media went into hysterics trying to ban the Confederate Battle Flag—while simultaneously ignoring the revelations about Planned Parenthood harvesting the organs of aborted babies, and babies born alive, for profit—I posted a graphic of the rebel flag alongside the Planned Parenthood logo with this question: “Which symbol killed 90,000 black babies last year?” Our government—using your tax dollars—is not to be subsidizing abortion. It’s illegal and immoral. Yet, Planned Parenthood receives more than a million tax dollars out of your pocket every single day. It shouldn’t get a penny. Good news: light now shines on this darkness. The abortionists were caught on tape nibbling lunch and sipping wine while nonchalantly pondering where to spend the profits made from bartering the bodies of innocent babies . . . just another day at the office. I know that it sounds unbelievable, like something from a macabre horror movie script—but the exposé must stir you to action, lest a nation, through complacency, accept the most revolting mission of Margaret Sanger. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, don’t just pray for unborn children. Demand that Congress stop funding abortion mills; elect a pro-life president; support pro-life centers that provide resources to give parents a real choice in this debate—knowing that choosing life is ultimately the beautiful choice.

The greatest blessing you will ever bestow in your life you may never know. And you don’t need to know. We don’t have to do spectacular things. We just have to keep doing what God has called us to do. In a very real sense, that boils down to bringing people to the table, and trusting God to… bring in a harvest decades or generations later.

You’ve planted not, now you pray for harvest— testing if God can, too, be the dumbest. Till the soil, sow seeds, and tend it your best— bet your life, though you pray not, you’ll be blessed!

changing message centered in himself. A rich harvest results from this unique “sowing.” The community around Jesus. A Samaritan woman and her community are sought out and welcomed by Jesus. In the process, ancient racial, theological and historical barriers are breached. His message and his community are for all. The water of life. Those who accept this water are called to share it with others. Religion and escape from God. The woman tries to use “religion” as a means of escape from Jesus’ pressing concern about her self-destructive lifestyle. Prophet and priest. The voice of the prophet is incomplete without the complementary priestly ministry of true worship. Salvation. God’s acts in history to save “through the Jews” are a scandal of particularity that proves to be a blessing for the Samaritan woman. Christian self-understanding. Four important aspects of Christian self-understanding appear in this story. These are (1) the confession of Jesus as the Savior of the world, (2) the obsolescence of the temple, (3) the incorporation of non-Jews into the people of God, and (4) the deabsolutizing of the law. Food and drink. Two kinds of drink (one passing and the other permanently sustaining) and two types of food (physical sustenance and spiritual fulfillment) are prominently featured in the story.

I should as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness, who was not diligent about his Bible reading, his prayers and the use of his Sundays. Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

I will never back away from declaring my belief that there are no spiritual gains without pains. I would as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who was content with sowing his fields and never looking at them until harvest, as to expect a believer to attain much holiness who was not diligent about his Bible reading, prayer, and the use of his Sundays. Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that person who pretends to be so superior

There was no lightbulb moment when somebody shouted: ‘Eureka! Let’s start planting crops!’ Though our ancestors had been aware for tens of thousands of years that you could plant things and harvest them, they also knew enough not to go down that road. ‘Why should we plant,’ exclaimed one !Kung tribesman to an anthropologist, ‘when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?’39 The most logical explanation is that we fell into a trap. That trap was the fertile floodplain between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where crops grew without much effort. There we could sow in soil enriched by a soft layer of nutrient-rich sediment left behind each year by the receding waters. With nature doing most of the work, even the work-shy Homo puppy was willing to give farming a go.40 What our ancestors couldn’t have foreseen was how humankind would proliferate. As their settlements grew denser, the population of wild animals declined. To compensate, the amount of land under cultivation had to be extended to areas not blessed with fertile soil. Now farming was not nearly so effortless. We had to plough and sow from dawn to dusk. Not being built for this kind of work, our bodies developed all kinds of aches and pains. We had evolved to gather berries and chill out, and now our lives were filled with hard, heavy labour. So why didn’t we just go back to our freewheeling way of life? Because it was too late. Not only were there too many mouths to feed, but by this time we’d also lost the knack of foraging. And we couldn’t just pack up and head for greener pastures, because we were hemmed in by neighbouring settlements,

In God's economy, you may even harvest a crop in places where you didn't plant seed. When you're generous, you will be blessed, whether it comes to you materially, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, or some other way. God obviously cares much more about what happens in our hearts than what happens in our bank accounts, more about our attitudes than our credit scores. Giving generously changes you. It frees you up, undermines the power that money and possessions can have over you, and it makes you more like Him.

When I harvest my life right up to the edges, I have collected every last kernel of blessing.

My people celebrate the passing of the autumn season and the beginning of winter days. We look on our bountiful harvest—" "—your people shop at grocery stores. They don't harvest, Killian." "Ahem," he said, glaring at me. "We look at all the goods we have purchased from the Other Side grocery stores and count our blessings for the ease of our bounty when once hunger plagued us.

A farmer’s crops weren’t doing well. He had tried everything he could with the land and soil he had, but no matter what he did, year after year, his harvest grew smaller, his bounty less plentiful. So, he up and moved, searching for a new land, a new beginning. After a long journey, he came upon the most ideal, freshest, nutrient-rich soil on earth. Living there in prosperity, he felt the urge to plant something to pass onto future generations so they could see what he was blessed with. He tilled the soil, and with tender love and care, he planted an acorn. He watched as the tree broke the soil, making its way upward. Young, healthy, and free. Year after year, he saw it expand, stretching its branches in all directions, letting it be, never pruning it, never tending to it. Under its own direction, it took off, soaring upward and outward, becoming the mighty oak seen from all directions. “People traveled from far and wide to admire the tree, wanting one for themselves. They all asked the farmer, ‘What did you do to grow such a majestic oak tree?’ “His answer, always the same. ‘I don’t do a thing, I just let it grow on its own.’ “Most turned away, perplexed by his explanation, convinced he was hiding something from them. Others, however, listened, reproducing the same results. “Time passed and eventually the farmer was no longer, but the tree remained a steadfast fixture on the farmer’s land. Eventually, more people moved into the area. They were different from the man. They considered themselves to be more educated, more advanced than a simple farmer. They disliked his gigantic symbol of individual success. “So they hatched a plan. They conspired with each other and decided to stop making it about the tree. Why don’t they turn the people’s attention to the branches? Brilliant. So, year after year, they would rev up the citizens over a blemish on a branch. One was crooked, another’s bark was too thick, some had too many leaves, others didn’t have enough. The people who cared passionately about more foliage fought with those who wanted less. Citizens who wouldn’t stand for crooked branches ganged up on those who only wanted them to be straight. All the while, the elites stood back, stirring the pot, and achieving their plan to eliminate the tree. Every once in a while a side would win, and a branch would be cut off. Others would chop one off from spite and anger. As the years passed, branch after branch not escaping the scourge of the bickering groups, the tree finally was nothing more than a trunk. The people who were so used to fighting with each other gazed upon one another from either side of the pathetic, devoured symbol. They realized they had destroyed the once extraordinary, grand oak. But it was too late. The elites got what they wanted.

Before Christianity entered the British Isles, the Pagan festival of the 24th of June was celebrated among the Druids by blazing fires in honour of their great divinity, who, as we have already seen, was Baal. "These Midsummer fires and sacrifices," says Toland, in his Account of the Druids, "were [intended] to obtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, now becoming ready for gathering; as those of the first of May, that they might prosperously grow; and those of the last of October were a thanksgiving for finishing the harvest.

it’s a gift for me to talk to our Father on your behalf.” Margaret moved through the door and into the hallway.

…if you keep sowing the right seeds, the harvest of blessing will come in God's time, in God's way!

To believe in the golden seeds of God that the angels have scattered and continue to offer an open heart are the first things we must do with our lives. And the next is to go through these gray days as announcing messengers ourselves. So much courage needs strengthening; so much despair needs comforting; so much hardship needs a gentle hand and an illuminating interpretation; so much loneliness cries out for a liberating word; so much loss and pain seek a spiritual meaning. God’s messengers know about the blessing that the Lord God has planted, even within these historic times. To wait in faith, for the fruitfulness of the silent earth and for the abundance of the coming harvest, means to understand the world—even this world—in Advent. To wait in faith—no longer because we trust the earth or the stars or our temperament and good courage—but only because we have perceived God’s messages and know about His announcing angels, and even have encountered one.

No one who does not live in New York can understand how completely it colors and lays its hold upon that city,” famed journalist Richard Harding Davis wrote in 1893 of the Thanksgiving Day game. “[I]t, in short, became ‘the thing to do,’ and the significance of that day which once centred in New England around a grateful family offering thanks for blessing received and a fruitful harvest now centres in Harlem about twenty-two very dirty and very earnest young men who are trying to force a leather ball over a whitewashed line.

Today, we give thanks to the cycle of rebirth For the grains, corn, and fruit that we pluck from the earth To those who carry with them the seed of new life That we reap during harvest with the basket and scythe We give thanks for the blessings upon fertile ground That keeps us fed and hale all the year-’round Everything that is and all that has been Carried forth by faithful servants within A blessing unto nature and the goddess of three Ever sacred is your will that is worked through me.

Anthony Hoekema writes, “the reception of the Spirit means that one has become a participant in the new mode of existence associated with the future age, and now partakes of the ‘powers of the age to come’.”[79] Their experience of the Spirit (Gal 3:1-5) is a sign that God’s eschatological restoration of Israel has begun. The Spirit is the way the promised blessing made to Abraham is being realized in all of Abraham’s true children.[80] This is why the Spirit is referred to as the "guarantee of our inheritance" (Eph 1:14; 2 Cor 1:22, 5:5) of the world to come.[81] The gift of the Spirit is the first fruits of the eschatological harvest. The first fruits stand for the beginning of the harvest; it is an experience in part of the harvest now and a pledge of more of the same kind and quality to come (Rom 8:23). The coming of the Spirit means the age to come is here.[82] The Abrahamic covenant finds its fulfillment in the new covenant and the gift of the Spirit is at the heart of the new covenant.

Doesn’t the idea of, like, completely wiping out the culture of your own people worry you? I mean, so much of what we’ve got here is such complete shit—” She stopped. Brill’s eyes were sparkling—with anger, not amusement. “You really think so? Go live in a one-room hut for a couple of years, bearing illiterate brats half of whom will die before they’re five! Without a fancy toilet, or even a thunder-mug to piss in each morning. Go do that, where the only entertainment is once a week going to the temple where some fat stupid priest invokes the blessings of Sky Father and his court on your heads and prays that the harvest doesn’t fail again like it did five years ago, when two of your children starved to death in front of your eyes. Then tell me that your culture’s shit!” Miriam tried to interrupt: “Hey, what about—” Brill steamed right on. “Shut up. Even the children of the well-off—like me—grow up living four to a room and wearing hand-me-downs. We are married off to whoever our parents think will pay best bride-price. Because we’re members of the outer families we don’t die of childbed fever—not since the Clan so graciously gave us penicillin tablets and morphine for the pain—but we get to bear child after child because it’s our duty to the Clan! Are you insane, my lady? Or merely blind? And it’s better for us in the families than for ordinary women, better by far. Did you notice that within the Clan you had rights? Or that outside the Clan, in the ordinary aristocracy, you didn’t? We have at least one ability that is as important, more important, than what’s between our legs: another source of status. But those ordinary peasants you feel such guilt for don’t have any such thing. There’s a better life awaiting me as a humble illegal immigrant in this world than there is as a lady-in-waiting to nobility in my own.

Care of the poor, vulnerable, weak, destitute, and isolated is the biblical standard of a just society. No society is just or healthy if the weakest aren't protected, if you need money to get a fair hearing in a court, or if the poor are denied opportunities to flourish. the king's justice especially blesses the needy and poor (Ps 72:4, 12-14). He passes judgment in their favor and saves the helpless by crushing their oppressors, as Yahweh crushed the head of Rahab, the Egyptian sea monster (Isa 51:9). The king's justice is summed up by the lovely phrase: 'The king is like rain upon the mowing, like showers that water the earth' (Ps 72:6; my translation). Without the rain of justice, everything dies--the garden withers to a wasteland. When a just king reigns, grain stalks stand tall and spread like cedars of Lebanon, and cities flourish like green fields, fresh as Eden (Ps 72:16). Rain refreshes and cleanses, glorifies and brightens. Rain on the mowing promises a future harvest beyond today's harvest. Blessed by Yahweh, the just king baptizes the land. Justice rolls down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).

Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerability is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either/or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails," we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made. But judgment may heal over time. One of the blessings of growing older is the discovery that many of the things I once believed to be my shortcomings have turned out in the long run to be my strengths, and other things of which I was unduly proud have revealed themselves in the end to be among my shortcomings. Things that I have hidden from others for years turn out to be the anchor and enrichment of my middle age. What a blessing it is to outlive your self-judgments and harvest your failures.

Today I wish you to know that 2024 isn’t going to be just a new year; it’s going to be an opportunity to step into your full power. It’s going to be a chance to paint your own masterpiece, to sing your own song, to dance to the beat of your own heart. For me, 2024 is going to be a year to unleash the Power of “YET”…. Darling listen – We’ve sown seeds of wisdom, weathered storms with resilience & discovered hidden depths within ourselves. Now, the time has come to reap the harvest, to blossom into our most radiant selves. Sweetheart, forget all the limitations whispered by age, convention or past experiences & embrace the power of “YET.” In 2024, say “I haven’t mastered this language yet,” “I haven’t traveled to that dream destination yet,” “I haven’t written my story yet.” Let “yet” be your compass, pointing towards endless possibilities.. Let you unmask your artist, break the mold, embrace the imperfect brushstroke, find (expand) your tribe & savor the process.. I wish & hope that each day you motivate yourself to be a little braver, a little bolder & a little closer to your best self.” Let 2024 be the year you become the most healthy, happy, vibrant, successful & authentic versions of yourself. Blessings! With warmth & anticipation, Your friend on this journey..

Whatever the precise referents, no Christian ‘harvester’ can ever justly forget that (1) success in reaping normally depends on the work of those who have gone before; and that (2) in those rare instances where sowing and reaping seem to go hand in hand, it is but the foretaste of the eschatological blessings still to come.

Psalm 67 For the choir director: A song. A psalm, to be accompanied by stringed instruments. 1 May God be merciful and bless us.        May his face smile with favor on us. Interlude 2 May your ways be known throughout the earth,        your saving power among people everywhere. 3 May the nations praise you, O God.        Yes, may all the nations praise you. 4 Let the whole world sing for joy,        because you govern the nations with justice        and guide the people of the whole world. Interlude 5 May the nations praise you, O God.        Yes, may all the nations praise you. 6 Then the earth will yield its harvests,        and God, our God, will richly bless us. 7 Yes, God will bless us,        and people all over the world will fear him.

Let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up” (Galatians 6:9).

The more you give, the more you have much to keep giving.

The more we give, the more we are blessed to keep giving.

Think for but a moment of what God has accomplished through his Christians in the United States. Christians have spent the last couple of hundred years going out as missionaries and bringing the gospel to the lost. There is no corner or place where the message has not been carried, and in some quarters it has been received with such great force that we now find those countries sending missionaries back to evangelize our country. It is well, when we criticize all the sins of the United States, that we also remember all those great Christians who gave their lives sharing the gospel.             But no matter how sugar-coated it is made, the United States stands as far from the gospel as it has in decades. What can be done for an old heart like ours? I do believe the one lesson to be taken from this great awakening is that we must come together in prayer. We must wait upon God, but we wait in expectation, knowing that he loves this people of this world more than we ever could. We have the assurance through the Word, that when we pray God listens, and when we pray for something that he has already commanded us to pray for—that he send more laborers into the harvest field—we may be confident of his answer. Let us look, then, to the harvest fields and see what God might turn our hands toward. How blessed is the God who uses such earthen vessels of clay to proclaim his majesty!

Dear God, I praise you for turning my seeds of hope into a fantastic harvest of blessings. Help me tell others of your excellent gifts. Amen.

Never give up! Galatians 6:9 encourages us: 'So let's not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up.

what both Jesus and Paul were saying is this: If you want to have a bountiful harvest, you have to plant. And if you want to plant, before you do anything you have to first have good soil. And even the best soil needs to be cultivated first. Our spiritual lives are the soil onto which God’s blessings are poured. The good news is that none of us is created with a bad soul, or bad soil. In fact, we are all created, as Genesis tells us, “very good,” and we possess within ourselves ground in which God’s Holy Spirit can move and create new life.

Blessing of The Land (at Planting or Harvest) God of the Universe, You made the heavens and the earth, So we do not call our home merely “planet earth.” We call it your Creation, a Divine Mystery, a Gift from Your Most Blessed Hand. The world itself is your miracle. Bread and vegetables from earth are thus also from heaven. Help us to see in our daily bread your presence. Upon this garden May your stars rain down their blessed dust. May you send rain and sunshine upon our garden and us. Grant us the humility to touch the humus, That we might become more human. That we might mend our rift from your Creation, That we might then know the sacredness of the gift of life— That we might truly experience life from the hand of God. For you planted humanity in a garden, and began our resurrection in a garden. Our blessed memory and hope lie in a garden. Thanks be to God, Who made the world teeming with variety, Of things on the earth, above, the earth, and under the earth. Thanks be to God, For the many kinds of plants, trees, and fruits, We celebrate. For the centipedes, ants, and worms, For the mice, marmots, and bats, For the cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers We rejoice, That we find ourselves eclipsed by the magnitude Of generosity and mystery. Thanks be to God.

EXCESS CROPS FOR OTHERS. [Deut. 24:19–22] When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.

When spring triumphed and new life burst forth in nature, our ancestors ascended the hill of our homeland to ignite flares. They did this in hopes of a bountiful harvest and a prosperous year, as a blessing and tribute for their toil upon the earth. From vantage points where they could survey the earthly realms, they used the spring flame’s fire to forge a connection with the celestial regions—domains beyond their sight, with the sky, infinity, and eternity, and with the forces at work there. They understood that from these realms, every renewal of life must originate.