Walking the Long Road

When I was a young minister, I imagined the Christian life would be lived mostly on the mountaintops — one great spiritual victory after another, a steady climb of ever-rising joy. The years have taught me something truer and, in its own way, more wonderful. The Christian life is not mostly mountaintops. It is mostly road. It is a long walk, day after ordinary day, in the same direction — and the great question of that walk is not how fast you run but whether you keep going. That is why Paul's words to the Galatians have become more precious to me with every passing year: "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Notice the very honest assumption buried in that verse. Paul does not say, "You might grow weary." He takes it for granted that you will be tempted to. Weariness in doing good is not a sign that something has gone wrong with your faith. It is the common experience of everyone who walks the long road. There is a particular kind of tiredness that comes not from doing evil but from doing good for a long time without seeing the result. The mother who pours herself out for her children year after year. The believer who keeps praying for a wayward loved one who has not yet turned. The servant who keeps showing up to do the quiet, unseen work that no one applauds. To all of them, and to me, and to you, the temptation is the same: to grow weary, to slacken, to quietly give up.

Why do we grow weary? Often it is because the harvest is delayed. Paul promises a harvest "at the proper time" — and the proper time is God's time, not ours. We sow, and we want to reap by the next morning. But the law of the harvest, which God has written into the whole creation, is that there is always a season between the sowing and the reaping. The farmer who plants in faith does not dig up his seed the next week to see if anything is happening. He waits. He trusts the slow, hidden work going on beneath the soil. And so must we. Much of the good we do is seed planted in ground we cannot see into, and the harvest may not appear for a long time — sometimes not until long after we are gone.

This is a great encouragement, if we will receive it. It means that the good you are doing is not wasted simply because you cannot yet see the fruit. The kind word, the faithful prayer, the small sacrifice, the patient endurance — none of it falls to the ground. It is seed, and seed has a future. "At the proper time we will reap." The promise is certain; only the timing is hidden. Heaven keeps an account that earth knows nothing about.

But notice the one condition Paul attaches: "if we do not give up." This is the hinge on which the whole promise turns. The harvest is sure — but it is sure for those who keep walking. The tragedy is not the believer who grows tired; we all grow tired. The tragedy is the believer who quits just before the dawn, who lays down the plow in the final hour of the night, who abandons the field the season before the harvest would have come. How many have given up on a prayer that God was about to answer, surrendered a calling that was about to bear fruit, walked away from a marriage or a ministry in the very season before the breakthrough? Do not give up. The reaping belongs to those who remain.

Let me give you, then, some help for the long road. First, fix your eyes on the harvest, not on your weariness. Weariness looks down at the next weary step. Faith looks up at the promised harvest. Keep the end in view. Second, do not walk alone. God never designed His people to walk the long road in isolation. We are meant to carry one another's burdens. When your own strength fails, lean on the fellowship of the saints; and when you have strength to spare, lend it to the brother or sister who is flagging beside you. Third, draw your strength from the Lord, not from yourself. Your own resources will run dry; His never do. "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength." And finally, take the next step. That is all the long road ever asks of you — not that you finish it today, but that you do not give up today.

I am near the end of my own long road now, and I can tell you it has been worth every weary mile. The harvest is real. God is faithful to His promise. So do not grow weary in doing good. Keep sowing. Keep walking. Keep showing up. At the proper time — His time — you will reap, if you do not give up.