The Harvest Principle: Gaining Wisdom

Welcome to the fourth week of our homily series The Harvest Principle. Remember the harvest principle is: you reap what you sow. This principle governs all of life. You plant a seed in the ground, if it receives proper nourishment, you can expect, eventually, to reap the rewards of what you've planted. 

When we sow good seed, most of the time, we're going to have a return of good fruit; bad seed brings bad fruit. 

We mentioned two important corollaries to this principle. First, you reap what you sow, but it's always later. You don't plant a seed today, and tomorrow expect to find a harvest. It takes time, and that's why this principle can be frustrating, and hard to fully understand. It takes time which requires patience.

The second corollary is you reap what you sow, but it's always greater. The more you sow, either good or bad, the more you reap, for good or bad. Two weeks ago, we applied this principle to our character, when you're making the right choices regarding character, you can expect to live a life of integrity, on the path to holiness. 

Last week we looked at this principle as it applies to our finances. The wisest use of our money is not to spend it, but to sow it. We sow with our finances, by giving, saving, and investing. You give first, you save and invest next, and then you spend last. Saving is an investment in our earthly future, and giving is an investment in our eternal future. 

Today we apply the harvest principle to an extremely important area of our lives that the Bible talks about all the time, Wisdom. To do that, we're going to look at a bible passage from our first reading, the book of the Prophet Daniel. Daniel is a prophet of the Old Testament, and the book of Daniel is his story. 

The book of Daniel includes visions of the future in sometimes-complicated symbolism, but always with a purpose and a present application. 

Here's what Daniel says, "At that time Michael, the archangel who stands guard over your nation, will arise. Then there will be a time of anguish greater than any since nations first came into existence.” 

Daniel is describing the beginning of the end time; the end of the world. The central figure in this time will be the Michael, the Archangel, who we know from elsewhere in scripture, as an angel who is also a warrior. From scripture we know he comes whenever serious stuff is happening. So, Daniel is looking ahead to this end time, a time he describes as a time of anguish greater than any other. 

Daniel is describing a reality that everyone will experience. However, not everyone will experience it in the same way. Some can expect distress, disgrace, and reproach. But, Daniel says, “Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever.”

That means, some are going to be beat up by the end, some are going to be overcome by it, but one group will be at an unparalleled advantage to everyone else. Daniel calls them the wise. So, today, we're looking at sowing seeds of wisdom. 

Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. Knowledge comes through education. Knowledge can be taught and learned. Also, wisdom and experience are not the same thing. Everybody gains experience, things happen to everybody, but not everybody understands what it is they are experiencing.

So what is wisdom? Understanding, applied to our experience and knowledge, equals wisdom. There are two facts of life that wise people do understand better than anybody else. First fact, we will face trouble in life. Trouble is a certainty of life. Sooner or later trouble is headed our way. That's the bad news. The good news is the second fact. We can sow seeds of wisdom, now, in anticipation of the trouble to come which will strategically set us up to better deal with trouble. 

I see this all the time at funerals. Funerals, inevitably, fall into one of two categories. On one hand: funerals of people who lived with wisdom. Those funerals are different. No matter the situation, no matter the context, no matter the circumstances, those funerals are inevitably different. For example, I did a funeral for a young man. He was 21 years old. Through no fault of his own, he died in a car accident one evening, and it was, of course, a very sad occasion. There was no getting away from the sadness. But the young man’s parents, suffering a heartbreaking loss, that few of us could imagine, carried themselves with such strength and nobility that they were actually a comfort to everyone else.

In fact, they were an inspiration. They were, especially, strong for the many young people who showed up filled with grief. Those parents showed concern, care, and kindness for those young adults, despite the weight of their own grief. 

On the other hand, not to criticize anyone, just trying to make a point, I had a funeral for a 97-year-old man who had never been sick a day in his life, who was active until the day he died. He died, by the way, in his own bed, in his sleep. 

He had a successful career doing work that he loved. He had a large extended family. Most everybody was successful and healthy. By any measure that was a life worth celebrating. That funeral, sad for sure, but that funeral should have had some element of giving thanks and for celebrating his life. But that family, God bless them, was completely unprepared to face the reality of death. So, that funeral, as a consequence, was an emotional rollercoaster. It was a train wreck. 

I'm not criticizing anybody. Everybody grieves differently, and they deserve our respect to do so, but those two stories underscore two very different approaches to life. I see it all the time. You can not prevent trouble, turmoil, distress, and death. You can avoid some of it, but you can not avoid it entirely. What you can do is prepare for it. You can sow seeds now, so when trouble comes your way, you're ready. You're able to survive. You can even thrive through difficulties and challenges. 

How do you do that? You do it by placing your knowledge and experience under the lens of eternity. Learn to view life through the lens of eternity because that's the very best way to look at life. That's what Daniel did. Wisdom is all about prioritizing the eternal and then fitting in the temporary. Wise people build their lives around what's eternal, and then they squeeze in the temporary. Temporary things are things such as sports, style, clothes, cars, golf, and even football. 

They are good things, they are even great things, but they are temporary things. At the same time, accidents, delays, dangerous-disease, death, terrorism, they are bad things for sure, but they are also temporary things. They pass away, they come to an end. They have a limited shelf life. Only God, and God's people, are eternal, that’s you and me.

Of course, the remaining question is, how do you acquire wisdom? How do you get that lens of eternity focused on your experience and your knowledge? The answer is simple, and obvious, and just what you'd expect to hear from the church-guy in church. Wisdom begins with prayer and a relationship with God because true wisdom comes from God.

So you sow seeds of wisdom through prayer. Prayer is foundational, it is fundamental, it is indispensable to the cultivation of wisdom.

Considering prayer, we are talking about a two-pronged approach. Number One, you need a daily quiet time, which includes talking to God and listening to him, and the best way to listen to him is through reading His scripture. It does not have to be long, just a short passage of scripture. Number Two, then match that daily prayer with weekly worship time, here with your church family at Mass.

A lot of people, despite their very best efforts, don't pray. They don't pray because they don't think they have time or maybe they don’t feel they are getting anything out of their prayer. But remember the principle of reaping what you sow – later and greater. It takes time to learn to pray and to gain the benefits of prayer.

I'm not just talking about going through the motions, or reciting endless prayers, or coming for communion and rushing back out for your car. I'm talking about daily quiet time and pouring yourself into the work of worship on the weekend. When you're doing that, you're learning to see differently. You're looking at your life through a different lens. It's the lens of eternity and that is what wisdom is, seeing differently through the lens of eternity.

The extraordinary vision Daniel paints in today's first reading is matched by an even more extraordinary, more extravagant vision described by Jesus in the Gospel. It all comes down to the basic reality that we're talking about throughout this homily series. Which is: 

You reap what you sow, you reap later, you reap greater. It's a fact that can help us appreciate the past and what's happened to us. It's also a tool, a tool we can use to change and be better, wiser, people.

The only challenge that we've been presenting through this entire homily series is for you to take time to consider what seeds you're sowing in your life: financially, relationally, in your marriage, with your children, or extended family, in your relationship with God. Take time and consider where you might sow differently, or sow better seeds. And also talk to God about it.

One last important thing to acknowledge is God’s grace and God’s mercy. God’s mercy says, you and I are not defined by our past. We are not the sum total of our mistakes, missteps, or sins. We are infinitely more than that. We are sons and daughters of God created in the image and likeness of God, and we can change. What are you sowing? The harvest principle is, you reap what you sow.