Sowing Righteousness

Sow righteousness for yourselves,

reap the fruit of unfailing love,
and break up your unplowed ground; 

for it is time to seek the Lord,
until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.

Hosea 10:12

I've just started a journey through the minor prophets and am currently in Hosea. If you haven't read it before, I highly recommend it. What a story! It really puts God's abundant patience and grace towards us in perspective. Israel is constantly unfaithful to her first love and completely unrepentant. Instead of sowing righteousness they sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (8:7). It's quite aggravating to read until you realize WE are all Israel in God's eyes. We all refuse to turn from our idols and seek righteousness. We all go astray and don't want to acknowledge our sin.

This verse stood out to me this morning because it shares what we miss out on in our unrepentance. When we sow wind instead of righteousness we miss out on the harvest of God's unfailing love. We miss the chance to have HIS perfect righteousness showered on us. 

In the New Testament, Paul tells the Galatians that "the one to sow to please his sinful nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Galatians 6:8). We have a choice to make, and God leaves it entirely to us. Sowing righteousness, sowing to please the Spirit, is hard. It means sacrifice, self-denial, always walking the narrow path. How much easier to just sow wind, nothing substantial, nothing hard. 

But sowing is always a means to an end. Farmers sow seeds in order to reap a plentiful harvest of crops. As believers we have to keep the end in mind. We sow righteousness in order to reap the joy of seeing God face to face one day. We make the sacrifices in order to one day reap the abundant gift of eternal life. And we should be faithful in tilling the ground of our hearts to make them more open and willing to seek the Lord's will in our lives.

Hosea told the Israelites that it was time to seek the Lord. The time is still here, it will always be here. I pray we are all able to better seek the Lord today, to sow righteousness and to look forward to an abundant harvest one day.