Return to The American Night Watch home page. For Protestants, the phrase leads to questions. Certainly it makes no sense for a farmer to care for his field unless preparing to sow or seeds have been planted. At the same time, the farmer who seeds and then walks away from the field is just trusting to luck. Productive farmers prepare, plant, and then tend until the harvest.
Salvation comes by grace through faith.
Without faith in Jesus Christ, we do not have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Once we have fellowship with God through the redemptive work of Christ, we need to cultivate our spiritual lives. Agricultural metaphors are used throughout the Scriptures. They are present not only because the world in which the Scriptures arose was more agrarian than ours, but because there are many similarities between farming and spirituality. Just as farming consists of creating the conditions that enable plants to grow, spirituality involves creating conditions that enable spiritual growth.