Seedtime and Harvest

Since the days of Noah, God has been promising to maintain the seasonal nature of life. “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22, NKJV). He repeats it through the writer of Ecclesiastes. “To everything there is a season, time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted” (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2, NKJV)

What’s most hopeful about these promises is that one season will inevitably give way to the next. We can bear the challenges of winter if we know summer will eventually come. And we won’t let ourselves take summer’s fruitfulness for granted when we remember our need to prepare for winter.

While we often think of seasons in fours, these verses boil them down to pairs—known as seedtime and harvest. All seven feasts of the Lord are related to the harvest season. Passover and its kindred feasts mark the first sign that barley is ripening. Pentecost arrives as wheat is just coming out of the fields. Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles are celebrated when the rest of the crops have been fully gathered in. Seedtime, on the other hand, begins when the harvest has been completed.

In Israel, Seedtime is Winter

Winter in Israel may not mean snow and ice, but it does mean rain. That’s what makes it the time of the seed. Summer’s dryness makes for hard-packed ground. The early rains drop right after harvest, softening the soil for the plows. Once the ground opens up, seeds can be planted in the moistened earth. This explains why the Feast of Tabernacles closes out harvesttime with a water ceremony where they ask the Lord of Heaven to bring the rain back.

Seedtime can be a difficult and potentially discouraging season. The farmer can’t see the reward for all his or her hard work for a long time. Though the seed carries within it a promise of fruit, it must lie buried before the farmer can see it.

What is sown in death, however, swells and takes root in the moisture of winter’s early rains. Just as the summer draws nigh, the latter rains kick in. The tender shoots enjoy a final burst of water that firms them up, sets their fruit, and enables them to make it through the drier harvest season to come.

And Harvest Time is Summer

All the promise that hid in the darkness of winter comes bursting into view in summer. Fruit that was small and inconspicuous during seedtime swells and takes on color as harvest time begins. Grains look no more impressive than tall blades of grass during winter, but in summer, their heads bow down under the weight of the plumping kernels. The farmer can at last see the rewards of all the labor of seedtime. He or she can reach out and touch what took so long to produce.

Summer’s harvesttime is gratifying, but it would be nothing at all without the season that came before. Likewise, winter is purposeless without the seed that was produced during harvest. God’s promise to keep seedtime and harvest always cycling around is a blessing we should treasure. One season feeds the other, but neither lasts forever.  

Seedtime and Harvest in Our Lives

We may not enjoy the winter seasons of life, but they produce something within us we can’t get during the sunnier days of summer. The seeds find their soil. The roots bite into the earth. And God pours out in abundance during winter what he pours out more sparingly in summer—rain.

I find it interesting that in Israel both the early and the latter rains are reserved for the winter of seedtime. To me, it means God gives a special promise to wash over us and fill us with his Spirit during the most challenging seasons of life. The rain of his Spirit renews our faith that the promise within the seed will indeed make it all the way to harvest.

So let the cold rains of winter whisper their promise to us in the dark. “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, and this one won’t last forever.” Let patience do its perfect work in us as seedtime and harvest each accomplishes its purpose before cycling through to the next.