While I was in Japan teaching English to Japanese high school students over the last year, a teacher at my school invited me to come to her orchard and help pick oranges. I went thinking that there might be a few trees and a few oranges, but instead was amazed to see hundreds of trees on a huge property, all dripping with ripe, glossy oranges. As I looked out from the top of a hill over the vast fields before me, I thought to myself that feeling must have been a little bit of what Moses felt when he looked over the Promised Land.
The teacher had assembled a small crew of family and friends to help harvest the oranges, because clearly it would take some help in order to pick so much fruit. There were all kinds of oranges, different sizes and shades of orange, all ready to be picked. We peeled some to see how they tasted, and they were sweet and juicy. I felt like I was in a Tropicana commercial. I couldn’t believe how many oranges were on each tree alone, and even after we had been picking for an hour or two, there were still hundreds of oranges left. We had picked only a fraction of the fruit available!
Jesus told his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” I thought about that verse as we worked, and how true it was that day. The incredible sight before me was a visual representation of how bountiful God’s harvest is. We picked and picked for hours, but when I left there were trees still left untouched, and I went home with huge bags of oranges.
Left unpicked, the oranges would fall to the ground, rotten. Without the several people working together to harvest the fruit, much of it would’ve gone to waste. In the same way, our time as workers to reap God’s abundant harvest is limited. There are so many people waiting to hear the gospel and accept Jesus into their hearts. Our earthly lives can be short, so let’s get out into the fields! \ (^.^) / – Pauline Wu
