Church (7) Field
| What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe--as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labour. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. 1Corinthians3:5-9 |
As God's people - the church - we are like a field. Paul and Apollos are merely seed-planters and seed-waterers. Seed-planters and waterers come and go but they can't make seeds grow. Only God can!
The seed is the Good News about Jesus Christ. Only God, by the power of the Spirit working in us, can make the seed grow.
 | When we were driving down to the Cape for our long leave, we drove through fields and fields of sunflowers in the Free State. These beautiful flowers were the "fruit" of plain and ordinary seeds that a farmer planted and watered. These seeds grew into beautiful plants that were beautiful to look at, provided oxygen through photosynthesis, seeds for sunflower oil, flowers for florists and seeds for another planting. |
What we didn't notice while we were looking at the sunflowers was the field. Underneath the flowers was a field. The seed are sown in the field. The water is poured onto the field. The seeds grow in the field and the fruit is harvested from the field.
The church is a field. God sows a glorious seed into our lives and if we are the "good soil" that Jesus describes in His parable, then the seeds grow into fruitful plants that bless and inspire the world.
This is what healthy farms do - you don't see the workers, you don't see the soil, you see the crop and the yield. May we, as the church, be the same!
