Olive Harvesting

Recently, I was watching a show where a British family had moved to a Greek island. The transition for this widow and her kids wasn’t going well. One thing in particular was the mother was having a hard time harvesting the olives from the trees. She finally asked for help from a neighboring farmer. When he came to help her, he brought nets to wrap around each tree. He told her to wait for them to drop then collect some, wait again for some more to drop, and then collect again.

Beforehand she had kept trying to climb the tree or a small ladder barely reaching a bunch of olives. She was always exhausting herself by trying to pull them off and if she could of reached all of them it would of taken her ages to get them down.

This is so similar in my life today. How many times do I try to make my own miracle? I see that the miracle could be possible. I do all that I should do to get that miracle only to grasp at the few aspects of it. When I should just lay a net down and wait for the miracle to ripen and drop at the right time.

In my personal life, I want healing. My body rebels against me with food and doing normal activities. I tried to help my healing along by doing a new treatment. It seemed okay and didn’t feel like God was saying no, but I wanted healing of any kind so badly I probably rushed a bit into it. I pushed myself to do something quickly and ended up hurting myself more. When all along God did want me to do the new treatment, but a different way. I believe it will help, but I do know in my life healing takes time and just like olive harvesting a lot of waiting, collecting and waiting again!

How many of us are trying to harvest our own miracle?

Are we trying to climb against God’s timing?

Are we rushing the harvest?

The more research I did on olive harvesting I learned; that if you harvest unripen green olives they are very sour. The longer that the olive stays on the tree it ripens to a rich black tasty olive. Picking an olive too early will give you a sour olive. Harvesting a miracle too early will give us a sour miracle. How many of us want a sour miracle?

Look at Abram in Genesis 16, he knew God made a covenant with him about creating a huge nation from him, but his wife, Sarai, was barren. She didn’t like the stigma of being barren so she pushed her maidservant on her husband and he didn’t say no. Hagar did have a child and Sarah held a grudge against her because of it. She tried to grasp at making her own miracle instead of waiting for a God given one. This doesn’t mean that God will punish us and not give us our miracle because God still brought Sarai a son. She just had to keep waiting. When she did finally had a son, through God’s hand, there still was a lot of strife between the two boys and their future descendants sadly. I hope I can keep reminding myself that even though we don’t understand God’s timing, it is always best to wait on His timing instead of our own.

Next time we want that promotion…pray, listen and wait!

Next time we want children…pray, listen and wait!

Next time we want that dream to come true…pray, listen and wait!

Next time we want your ministry to grow…pray, listen and wait!

Next time we want healing…pray, listen and wait!