About to give up?

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season
we will reap, ​if we do not give up."
Galatians 6:9

This simple encouragement from a New Testament writer assumes that doing good does not always have an immediate reward, and in fact, might be draining to continue over a longer period of time.

But the writer also promises us that there is a harvest that will come if we just don't grow tired and quit.

The Law of the Farm works in our daily lives as well: what we sow, we reap. We don't get strawberries from poison oak plants, or apples from scrub oaks. But this Law applies not only in kind, but also in time: we can't procrastinate  letting time roll by, only to enter a flurry of activity in late September, smothering the soil with seeds and flooding it with water, and expect to eat melons in early October. Harvests reflect the persistent, often tedious cultivation of the farmer over a long period of time. 

Most of us are motivated by the initial excitement of the task ahead. We can't wait to jump out of the starting blocks. We're also find a reserve of strength when we round the final corner and see the finish line ahead. The problem is in the tiresome, middle laps of the race. Or, to use the image of the farm, not the sowing nor the reaping, but the long, often tedious repetition of tending and weeding wears us down. It is then that we need to remember that promise:  "...we will reap, if we do not give up..."

Honesty, prudence, unselfishness, a careful mouth, a healthy body, a sharp memory and informed mind—all the things we say we value—come to us by the Law of the Farm. I can say that I want to be slim and trim, but if I'm twenty pounds overweight today, I can't get there by tomorrow morning. If I routinely lie and am careless with the facts, I can repent today but I won't be very good at truth-telling tomorrow. Life is maddeningly slow to develop. 

So what we sow, we need to cultivate to harvest; otherwise, all that work goes to waste.

It's a good reminder for us in this instant-everything age. Life is so daily, and persistence is one of the most basic ingredients to success.