Humanity is white for harvest
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Don’t you say, ‘There are four more months and then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, look up and see the fields that are already white for harvest!” John 4
Passing through the countryside I saw these fields of barley, near Magdala, and I immediately thought of this phrase of Jesus.These fields are white for harvesting. I took this picture about ten days ago, at the end of April; in Israel the countryside is ahead of the nations further north, here it is already summer, we are even below sea level. The sun hits hard and the light is brighter than we are used to, in the central hours of the day it is blinding and all the colors of nature “whiten”.
The whitening, therefore, is not given only by the variation of the colour from the green of the unripe ear to the yellow of the mature one. The ear, which is us, is complete only if it is ripened and struck by the divine light, which is white and shining, and which it in turn reflects, as in the photo.
Humanity is white for harvest, like the cloud of the Son of Man…
“Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe”. So the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped” Rev 14
Each of us will be harvested, and being ready for that moment is the most important thing of all.
We probably don’t have any desire and we don’t feel ready to be reaped at all. This uncertainty is beneficial because it forces us to reflect and try to improve ourselves continuously, without ever feeling that we have arrived or are completely safe.
We are fragile beings, and the Lord knows it, he sees that we laboriously walk the path of life, groping around, and he has compassion on us. And He sees very well if we do what we can, even if with poor results, or if we do not take care at all to prepare for the harvest.
