Just like the farmers

In James, the author (James) tells the twelve Jewish-Christian nations to “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (5: 7-8 ESV)

I love the analogy that James uses here, being patient like the farmer, which is, establishing our hearts for “the coming of the Lord”. This was something that these Jewish-Christians would have been very familiar with. Their society and culture was very much an agrarian society, meaning farmers were just as common as Starbucks are today, one on every corner.

My guess is that the majority of us can’t imagine what that would be like; sheep running everywhere, cows ‘mooing’ all the time, chickens just hanging out, corn fields in view with every turn of our head, and a myriad of other fruits and vegetables spread throughout our neighborhoods. This image is not very familiar to us, well simply because we are a very rural and urban society these days, the things of farms and farmers is left to the ‘middle of nowhere places’. There is a greater portion of us who don’t know farmers than those of us who do. Remember also we are in Columbia Missouri, so we may know more farmers than someone in LA or New York, but you get the point.

This analogy might be foreign to large numbers of christians now a days, so why use it? Don’t you think God knew that our society wouldn’t be as agrarian? Absolutely He did, but He still chose to use this example, and for good reason. This analogy speaks perfectly of what it looks like to ‘patiently waiting’. When we think of waiting we think of not doing much, at least I do. We think that by waiting we are supposed to occupy ourselves with something completely different until the end product is received, in this case, the coming of the Lord. However, that is not what James meant here by being patient like the farmer waits for his crops to yield.

Farmers have many tasks as they are ‘waiting’ for their crop to yield. They have to check the crop to make sure it is still growing and growing correctly, they have to prepare the equipment for harvest, they have to tend to their animals with food and protection, they have to prune vegetable plants (great example of this analogy can be found in John 15) they have to plant other crops or harvest other crops, they might have to fix some machinery, or spray pesticides. All these examples are of modern day farmers, but think about those farmers back during biblical times, they still had many tasks to do while ‘waiting’ for their crop, if not more.

If we are to be ‘patiently waiting’ for the coming of the Lord, how do we do that? Just like the farmer we have to be active, we have to be learning about the Lord, we have to be tending to our minds, hearts and souls, we have to protect our hearts and those around us. James says there in verse 8, “you also be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord”. These things look different to each person, just like each task looks different to each farmer, but the main point is that we can not be stagnant in our faith or our hearts will not be established, we must edify our hearts.