Harvesting Dreams 

Proverbs 10:5
He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son,
    but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son.

Matthew 9:37-38
Then [Jesus] said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’

Galatians 6:9
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Thales of Miletus lived from about 636 to 546 BC and is noted for his contributions to mathematics and science, and especially for proposing that water is the fundamental substance of all matter. He is often regarded as the first recorded Western philosopher. The picture shows a bust of Thales in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, but is not contemporary with him and is unlikely to bear any resemblance!

Although he apparently wrote nothing down, he is believed to have introduced geometry into Greece and to have been a capable astronomer. It is said he predicted an eclipse of the sun in 585 BC, and was acknowledged as one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

It is interesting that Thales has stories told about both his great practical skills and also about him being an unworldly dreamer. Aristotle, for example, relates a story of how Thales used his skills to deduce that the next season's olive crop would be a very large one. He therefore bought all the olive presses and was able to make a fortune when the bumper olive crop did indeed arrive. On the other hand Plato tells a story of how one night Thales was gazing at the sky as he walked down the road and promptly fell into a ditch. A passing servant girl lifted him out and scolded him by saying, "How do you expect to understand what is going on up in the sky if you do not even see what is at your feet".

As Christians, and as a church, there is the need for us to see both the heavens and the earth. With feet firmly planted on the ground, we should remind ourselves regularly of the spiritual realities that lie behind our everyday lives. We need to keep our eyes fixed resolutely on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. We need a determination to keep our attention on his purposes for our lives, otherwise we will find ourselves aimlessly wandering aimlessly and largely unproductively through our years on earth. We need a heavenly vision of what God is calling us, and our church, to do and be. Otherwise we will find ourselves simply going around in circles getting nowhere. We need to live heavenly lives in the places that God has set us, with all the challenges, problems and pitfalls. Not so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly use, but captured by an eternal vision that informs our day-to-day living. People who are in the world, but not of it. The Lord desperately searches for those who will dare to dream his dreams and who will also be ready to pay the price to make the dream come true, people who are visionary but also practical enough to make the vision real. Workers for the harvest.

This is why being a full and active member of a lively and committed Christian church is so important. It is the place where heaven and earth meet; where God’s plans and purposes are communicated and his power released to realise the dreams within lives given over to him. Someone once said church is the coming together of God and his people to create the place where dreams are harvested.

Lord, may it be so of Faversham Baptist Church!