There is great relief and satisfaction when the waiting and work of the year culminate in a fruitful harvest. There is joy when the final cut of silage is in and covered. There is joy when trailers overflow with apples. There is joy when a crop of spuds has avoided disease and is safely drying in the store, and there is joy when trade for livestock is strong and worthwhile prices are reached. These occasions help offset losses and discouragements along the way.
Harvest joy
Psalm 4 is an honest recognition that there are distressful times in life. The Psalmist opens by praying, “Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer” (Psalm 4:1.) However, when we get to the end of the psalm, he has reached an experience of joy that he compares to harvest joy.
He says, “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound” (4:7). As a result, he could lie down and sleep in peace. How did he come into this joy that exceeded the joys of a bountiful harvest?
Often, a fresh heart is put into farmers when the weather improves, the sun shines and the ground starts to dry. In Psalm 4 the writer found new heart and hope when the Lord let the light of His face shine upon him and his people (v6). The warmth of the Lord’s grace and kindness to us can undo the set-backs of even the worst conditions in our lives.
Back in April we were experiencing a severe and prolonged frost, which was hard on apple and plum tree blossoms, threatening the harvest to come. But then a warm summer came. Grass growth exploded and exceptional milk yields followed. While it can be difficult to know joy when other’s crops are prospering and ours are not, God can give us a joy that exists outside of circumstances. He invites us to seek Him for this greater joy.
Jesus revealed His desire that we live in this perennial joy when he said, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11). We sell ourselves short when we try to satisfy our souls with harvests of material things.
Satisfaction in God
God’s purpose for us is that we enjoy ourselves, and we will only truly achieve that by learning to glorify God - enjoying and glorifying God are one and the same end. We are to delight ourselves in the Lord. The Bible teacher John Piper puts it this way, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
So, how do we begin this life of greater joy? To return to the Psalmist, we are advised, “Offer right sacrifices and trust in the LORD.” (Psalm 4:5). The only sacrifice that can bring us into a relationship with God is the one made for us by Jesus when he died on the cross for our sins.
Therefore, plant your faith in Him alone. Ask Him for his gracious pardon of all your sins. Receive this message today with the joy given by the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 1:6). May the light of the Lord’s face shine upon you as you read this, so that you may experience of His greater joy.
Rev Norman Smyth is married to Linda and they have three children. The son of a County Antrim dairy farmer, he is the minister of First and Second Markethill in County Armagh.
His blog appeared in a fortnightly column entitled ‘Good News For the Countryside’, in today’s Farming Life, where people from a farming background, or who have a heart for the countryside, offer a personal reflection on faith and rural life.
You can read Normans’s contributions, and look at other reflections in this series of blogs, here.
If you would like to talk to someone about any of the issues raised in this article, please call Rev Kenny Hanna on 028 9753 1234 or email him at khanna@presbyterianireland.org.