Harvest Of The Soul

    There is a purple haze over the hilltops and a hint of sadness in the sunshine because of summer's departure; on the low ground down by the spring the walnuts are dropping from the trees and the squirrels are busy hiding away their winter supply.  Here and there the leaves are beginning to change color and a little vagrant autumn breeze goes wandering over the hills and down the valleys whispering to "follow, follow, " until it is almost impossible to resist. So I should not be too harshly criticized if I should ramble a little even in my conversation.

Autumn in the Missouri Ozarks

     We have been gathering the fruits of the season's work into barns and bins and cellars. The harvest has been abundant, and a good supply is stored away for future needs.  Now I am wondering what sort of fruits and how plentiful is the supply we have stored away in our hearts and souls and minds from our year's activities. The time of gathering together the visible results of our year's labor is a very appropriate time to reckon up the invisible, more important harvest.

     When we lived in South Dakota where the cold came early and strong, we once had a hired man, (farmers had them in those days), who was a good worker, but whose money was too easily spent. In the fall, when the first cold wind struck him, he would shiver and chatter and, always would he say, "Gee Mighty! This makes a feller wonder what's become of his summer wages!"

     Ever since then, Harvest Home time has seemed to me the time to gather together and take stock of our mental and spiritual harvest, and to wonder what we have done with the wealth of opportunity that has come to us, and the treasures we have had in our keeping. Much to often I have felt like quoting the hired man of other days.

     Have we found a new friendship worthwhile?  Have we kept safely the old friendships, treasures worth much more than silver and gold? People in these history-making days hold their opinions so strongly and defend them so fiercely that a strain will be put upon many friendships; and the pity of of it is that these misunderstandings will come between people who are earnestly striving for the right thing. Right seems to be obscured and truth is difficult to find.

     But if the difficulty of finding the truth has increased our appreciation of its value, if the beauty of truth is plainer to us and more desired, then we have gathered treasure for the future. We lay away the gleanings of our years in the edifice of our character where nothing is lost. What have we stored away in this safe place during the season that is past? Is it something that will keep sound and pure and sweet or something that is faulty and not worth storing?

     As a child I learned my Bible lessons by heart in the good old-fashioned way and won the prize for repeating correctly more verses from the Bible than any other person in the Sunday school. But always my mind had a trick of picking up a text here and a text there and connecting them together in meaning. In this way there came to me a thought that makes the stores of my invisible harvest important to me.  They are text familiar to everyone. It is their sequence that gives the thought.

     "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.  But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves do not break through and steal." 

(Matthew 6:19-20)

     And then: "Neither shall they say, Lo here! 

for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you." 

     (Luke 17:21)

Laura Ingalls Wilder
(1867-1957)
American author of the "Little House" books.

"Harvest of the Soul"
(October 1920)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

From the book, 

"Little House In The Ozarks

A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler
The Rediscovered Writings"
Edited by Stephen W. Hines
(1991)
Guideposts Edition