Ebola and harvest

What have we been taking for granted regarding health and wealth?

“We know not to take harvest for granted,” Westminster Theological Seminary professor emeritus D. Claire Davis wrote to me in a letter in September. “It’s only the Lord who gives it. The rain comes from God, and the food too.” True, and let’s consider that in terms of our assumption (most of the time) that epidemics are ancient history.

Sukkot (Tabernacles), the fall harvest festival in biblical times that Jews still commemorate today, ended yesterday. Sukkot is when Jesus proclaimed, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37, ESV). “When the crop dries up that’s the Lord’s judgment against idolatry, sending a clear message to those people who think they run the world,” Davis wrote. “When he sends the rain, we feel his mercy.”

Father, health is drying up in Africa and possibly in the United States as well. Please send healing rain. We pray for your mercy.

Ancient Israel had two other harvest festivals: Passover in the spring and Shavuot in the summer. “Passover is when the Lord gave His people freedom from Egyptian slavery and then their first harvest in their promised land,” Davis wrote. (It’s also Easter time, when Christ freed us from enslavement to sin.) Fifty days later, Davis noted, came Shavuot/Pentecost, when “the harvest of believers by the love of Jesus” began in abundance, as 3,000 turned to Him.

Thank you, God, for the harvest of food you give us, and even more for the harvest of health, and even more for the harvest of men and women who turn to you, sometimes in desperation.

“You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? …” (Psalm 73:24–25, ESV).