Most biblical teaching is set in the context and backdrop of agricultural life, a life rapidly being left behind, shelved, a relic of the past, even for modern farmers. If we are going to preserve the profound teaching of God's Word, unavoidably set in the context of earthly and agricultural metaphors, we must be very deliberative about staying in touch with those metaphors. It is more instructive and penetrating to our senses to take a walk on a path through the woods. The child of today will draw a blank at those words. The controlling metaphor of the present season is and should be harvest.
Combines now work our fields.
Unfortunately, it is usually preserved only for the sake of religious rhetoric and guilt. Originally the land steward was a sharecropper who leased a field, gathered crops and returned a share of the harvest to the owner. Sharecropping was such a common notion that it almost unconsciously dominated the mentality of Israel. God's people are not only caretakers of temporal gifts. We are also caretakers of the heavenly gifts of the Holy Spirit.