Around the country, the harvest has begun. Huge machines crawl across fields of corn and soybeans, gathering the crop.
I came across an interesting agricultural scene in rural India: a man is standing on the flatbed of a wooden trailer parked alongside a road. Bundles of grain from a nearby field are scattered on the pavement. As cars, trucks, tractors and water buffalo-drawn carts pass by, their tires grind the spikes of rice. A worker then passes a shallow basket of the crushed grain up to the man on the flatbed. He tosses the grain into the air and a breeze blows away the lighter chaff while the heavier kernels fall into a heap on the platform – an old-fashioned Indian threshing process.
The Psalmist says of the wicked that they are like chaff that the wind blows away (Psalm 1). This image of God’s judgment is carried forward in a warning from John the Baptist. Speaking of Christ he says His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3). Thankfully Jesus, the Divine Harvester, is also our Loving Savior, who lived sinlessly as our representative, then was punished at the cross as our substitute to redeem us for eternal life in heaven, on the Last Day gathering the wheat into his barn.
ELS mission work in India is conducted by the Asia Committee of the Board for World Outreach.
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Steve Petersen
