Day 9- Don’t give up! Just keep swinging the pick axe
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
- Galatians 6:9
Growing up my dad used to love using the story of Winston Churchill’s famous commencement speech from 1941 at Harrow School in his sermons where Churchill simply said: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in”. Now when my dad told the story he paraphrased it, saying: “Don’t give up! Don’t EVER give up!” He would always say it with such passion, yelling it actually like a war chant. It always got to me in a very powerful way. I have to believe that God is looking down on us when we’re at our breaking point, yelling, “Don’t give up! Don’t you EVER give up!” He says it, in a much lighter tone, through Paul in Galatians 6:9. God has promised us a harvest; that may be a harvest in our own lives, or in the lives of someone we’re praying for. Either way, you can expect that it’s coming.
I saw a great illustration of this recently. An animated picture of two men who had been digging for what looks like a long time. Both had made a tunnel in the ground. The man on the bottom is frustrated and walking away from his dig while the man on top is happily digging away. The man below was inches away from a pile of diamonds that the man on top will now get. A couple more swings of the pick axe and he would be knee deep in his reward. How many of us are a “couple of swings” away from being knee deep in the harvest God has promised us?