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What will you reap at the end of 2015?
It's another year! Welcome to 2015!
It might seem too soon, but as 2015 commences, I’m considering what I will be reaping at the end of the year. I’ve been reminded about the importance of sowing and reaping. The sowing comes first.
Whether it is your personal life, your family, your career, your spiritual life or your church, what we sow we will reap.
What are we investing in? What gets our time? What gets our attention? What has priority in my life? Whatever receives the most attention is what we are investing in. Where we sow, we will reap.
“Let us not become weary of doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9
Sowing to reap a harvest is a process. A farmer must trust the process! And the process involves patience and perseverance during the watering, fertilising and caring phase. Until the harvest comes, the farmer must not give up or lose hope.
In 1953, a fledgling company called Rocket Chemical Company and its staff of three set out to create a line of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for use in the aerospace industry, in a small lab in San Diego, California.
It took them 40 attempts to get the water-displacing formula worked out. But they must have been really good, because the original secret formula is still in use today.
Convair, an aerospace contractor, first used the product to protect the outer skin of the Atlas missile from rust and corrosion. The product worked so well that several employees secretly took cans home to use there too.
A few years later, Rocket Chemical Company founder Norm Larsen experimented with putting the product into aerosol cans, believing consumers might find it useful at home—just as employees had. And so, WD-40 (which stands for “Water Displacement – perfected on the 40th try”) made its first appearance on store shelves in San Diego in 1958.
If the original three staff members of the Rocket Chemical Company had not been patient and persistent during the sowing period, they would not have reaped the harvest.
Keep going when results may not be evident. We need to be patient and never give up. God will bring it about in His time.
But we have a part in this, and that is the sowing. The planting. The investing.
What opportunities do you have to sow?
May 2015 be the year of sowing and planting so that the harvest can be reaped. God just may surprise you.
Many blessings this coming year.
Major Christine Dickson
Generous Life Coordinator