When In Need … Plant a Seed

Okay – so you’re in the middle of a famine. Almost no food to go around. Your family’s close to starvation. You have – ooh, about a half a bag of grain left. That’s all. Just enough to keep the family in bread for the next couple of weeks.

Either that … or enough to plant out part of your field with seed, in the hope that a few months down the track – if the rains come, just enough, not too much, at precisely the right time – you’ll have food galore. (That’s if the locusts don’t eat it all!)

So – what ya gonna do – huh?

We often find ourselves in that spot in life. Do we crawl back in the corner and wait for God to do something? Or do we step out (in faith?!) and do something crazy like taking two weeks’ worth of perfectly edible food while we’re starving during a famine, and sowing it into the dry, rocky, hard ground hoping against hope?

Genesis Chapter 26 has always intrigued me. There’s a famine in the land, and Isaac wants to run away to Egypt even though he’s already in the Promised Land. Sound familiar?

Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar. The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. (vv 1-3)

So (while he sinned along the way) in this, he obeyed God and …

Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. (vv 12-13)

“For a while?” How long’s that?! Challenged? Scared even?

So let me ask you again … what ya gonna do, huh?

Love to hear from you on this one.