Compressed Time Frames

I think I remember someone saying, “We are living in a period of compressed time frames.” I shared with our Business Men’s Fellowship today that it feels like we are running to catch up to jump onto a moving train that’s picking up speed. I don’t know if it’s true for the rest of the world, but for the kingdom of God the times and the seasons are gaining momentum. Our labor in the Lord is also becoming more concentrated, and we are experiencing greater result for the effort.

I’m reminded of the parable of the farmer in Matthew 20, who hired laborers for the vineyard. He went to the marketplace in the early morning, late morning, noon, early afternoon, then finally late afternoon, always finding able bodied workers for the field of harvest, standing around, unemployed in the square.

The parable doesn’t say harvest, but I assume it from Jesus comment in John 4:35, “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and [then] cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” Since the time of Jesus, the field of the earth has been ripe for the picking.

The farmer paid each man as agreed. (That’s another lesson.) But I asked the Lord once, “Why the urgency? What was the big hurry?” All I could imagine were billows of dark clouds looming over the horizon. An ominous storm was brewing, and the farmer knew the harvest had to come in that day, for by tomorrow whatever was left in the field would summarily be destroyed by the oncoming weather front. It was no longer a matter of skill, or resources, or money. This was a last days ingathering or nothing!

Jesus lived life with this sense of urgency, and expressed it when he said, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4). This life is our one shot, and this may be the last generation to have the opportunity to labor in the harvest field while it is yet day. “…Behold, now [is] the accepted time; behold, now [is] the day of salvation” (II Cor.6:2).

May this be our prayer while we are working. Yes, working and praying at the same time. “The harvest truly [is] plenteous, but the labourers [are] few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Mat 9:37-38).