Lift Up Your Eyes: Guest Week-Jay Williams

John 4:35 - "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest."

The road (Highway 300) that connects Albany, GA to Interstate 75 is a rather uneventful drive. You will pass through a few small towns and go by a lake, but for the most part it consists of farm land.

In the 4th chapter of St John, we read a very personal experience involving Jesus and a nameless Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. From the beginning of the conversation, one can sense the animosity that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. You can also pick up hints of this disdain between the two people groups in the dialogue of Christ's disciples as well. Yet, Jesus had a need to go through Samaria on this particular journey, and I imagine His disciples were much like I was this past Sunday when traveling on Highway 300. Just a few more miles, just a few more minutes, and I'll be through this highway flanked by farmland. But on this certain day something caught my eye. Cotton. Big, fluffy white cotton covering the fields in what appeared like heavy snow that had fallen on bushes. The fields (in my non-agricultural eyes) appeared to be white to harvest (ripe and ready to harvest) just as Jesus spoke about to the disciples in regards to the people of Samaria. While His disciples were perplexed in trying to figure out why he had been speaking to the nameless (and now departed) woman and exactly who had fed him (see John 4:31-34), they completely missed the fields. Not fields of cotton, but rather fields of people. A people who are ripe and ready for harvest. A people desperately searching for help, comfort, guidance and salvation. A people in need of a Savior!

As previously stated, I am not a farmer; therefore, I wouldn't even begin to know the most effective and efficient way to harvest those cotton fields. Yet I know without a doubt that had I stopped along that highway and ventured into the field with a bag in hand, I would have certainly been able to fill the bag, even without any cotton-picking experience. God help us all in our spiritual journeys to "lift up our eyes" and be willing to labor in any field, so that we may reap wages unto life eternal.