“Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap if we faint not,” (Gal. 6:9), is a seasonable exhortation. There is much to cause us to be weary, and Sunday school workers are sometimes tempted to think that no work is so wearisome as theirs.
We remember a dear devoted laborer once remarking that he believed every workman suffered in the work he had to do for the Lord; and if workmen did not suffer in it, he questioned if they were in their right place. Without going so far as to say that this is always the case, it certainly is so very frequently as far as the body is concerned.
Not that the suffering is confined to the body. We have all to suffer in spirit more or less at the utter indifference displayed towards our message; and how often a dagger has been sent to the heart of the workman by finding the work which he had hoped to be real, all scattered to the wind! And where it is not proved to be false, the real work is spoiled at least for the time by the wiles of the enemy. Each workman knows his own discouragements; but to each and all the word is,
“Let us not be weary in well-doing.”
It is helpful to contemplate the path of our Lord when here on earth. Was it not beset with discouragements on every hand? His own nation refused Him, and even His disciples misunderstood Him; one tried to hinder Him and then denied Him; and another betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Yet He,
“For the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).
So there is a reason given why we should not be weary in well-doing; “for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” This gives encouragement. It is a fact that there will certainly be an abundant harvest: such that no man can number. The promise is that you shall be one of the reapers if you faint not. Some, alas, have fainted, looked back, and given up: they cannot hope to be reapers though they may have been sowers. You are now sowers, and the Word declares that you shall reap if you faint not. If you faint, God must look around for other workers to take your place.
But we hope better things of our readers. Should anyone have been tempted to give up because of his sufferings and his discouragements, let him remember that his Lord had both, in a measure far exceeding what His servants can have. And ought the servant to expect an easier place than his Master had?
Besides, let him look forward to the harvest, and remember that there will certainly be an abundant harvest, with great rejoicing—rejoicing, not only by those gathering in, but by those who were the means of their being gathered: as the Psalmist says,
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psa. 126:5, 6).
Then let us not be weary, but be looking forward to the time of ingathering; for the divine promise is that “we shall reap if we faint not.”