This time of year the wheat harvest rolls across Kansas, Colorado, the Dakotas and other Western states. It’s a beautiful site, the amber waves of grain swaying in the breeze, while harvesters relentlessly cut the stalks and separate the heads. As you drive past field after field, you get an idea of the bountiful nature of these lands. Our shelves bulge with bread all year long.

David observed the Lord’s abundance: You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it…you provide their grain, for so you have prepared it…You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with abundance…the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.

It must have been a fabulous harvest season in Israel. David wrote of overflowing wagon tracks—so much grain that the harvest wagons burst at the seams. I read once that the wheat harvest in the old Soviet Union suffered because the farmers lost a great deal of grain between the fields and the storage facilities due to dilapidated equipment. But here the equipment is not the issue. God sent a lavish yield, so much so that the grain trailing behind underscored his largesse.

I benefit from a lavish yield in my life as well. Plenty of foods line the shelves of my local grocery store. I live in a warm house and drive reliable vehicles. More importantly, I enjoy family and friends and the relationships that make for an abundant life. God’s openhandedness surrounds me.

David refers to the Lord as the God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth. Let this year’s harvest, the abundance that surrounds us, remind you and me of our amazing God, truly our hope and the hope of every person around the world.

Psalm 65

Photo by James Baltz