Paul writes these words at the close of a letter about freedom, and he writes them in the plural: let us not become weary. The verb he uses means something closer to losing heart than to being tired — to flag, to grow faint, to quietly stop expecting anything to come of it. It is the specific exhaustion of doing good and seeing nothing happen.
Notice what Paul has just said. A person reaps what they sow; the harvest is not in question. What is in question is the timing. Paul puts the reaping at the proper time, which is to say on God's calendar, not on the one we would have chosen. That single clause does a great deal of work. It means the absence of a harvest today is not evidence that the sowing was wasted. It only means the season is not finished.
Then Paul makes it concrete. As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those in the family of believers. The scope of the command is broad, but the measure of it is small: what is in front of you today. Not the whole field. The opportunity of this afternoon.
This is where a life like Arthur Blessitt's is a useful picture and nothing more. He did not carry a twelve-foot cross across 324 countries in a single act of will. He carried it one day, then got up and carried it the next. Whatever forty-three thousand miles of faithfulness looks like from the outside, on the inside it is almost always unremarkable: the same conversation, the same kindness offered again, the same work done when no one is counting.
So the weariness you feel is not a moral failure. It is the honest response of a person who has been sowing for a while. Paul does not scold it. He simply says the harvest has a time, and it is not yours to set. Which means today's task is not to produce the harvest. It is only to not stop.
🏔️Perseverance
The Harvest Comes at the Proper Time
Faithfulness is mostly showing up again today
October 22, 20265 min readNIV
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
— Galatians 6:9 (NIV)
Doing good to all
Today's Story
📖True Story
The cross was twelve feet of wood, and Arthur Blessitt carried it out onto the road.
It began in 1969. What followed was more than 43,000 miles through 324 countries, island groups and territories — all seven continents. He carried the cross not as a protest or a spectacle but as a way to start conversations about Jesus with whoever happened to be walking the same street that day.
The weariness came from places he might have expected welcome. Churches sometimes turned him away when he asked for a bed for the night. Bars and nightclubs took him in. That is a strange sentence to write, and Blessitt did not soften it: the buildings that carried the name of Christ sometimes closed the door, while the ones that carried no such name opened it. He did not dress it up as a triumph. He simply said it was so.
And he kept walking. Not for a year or a decade — his walking ministry continued for more than five decades. Guinness World Records recognized the journey as a record-setting pilgrimage, though the record was never the reason for it. He described the whole undertaking as a way to bring the Christian message to people around the world. The point was the message, and the walking was how he got it to the next person.
Somewhere in those five decades were mornings he did not want to lift the wood again, and the record does not tell us about them. What it tells us is that he lifted it.
Arthur Blessitt died in 2025 at the age of 84. His obituary is measured in countries and continents because that is how such things are counted. But a pilgrimage of 43,000 miles was never walked 43,000 miles at a time. It was walked one day's walk at a time, by a man who got up and put one hand in front of the other and did the thing again.
Source citation: World’s farthest walking pilgrim Arthur Blessitt dies at 84 (Donna Birrell, Premier Christian News, 2025) / https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/arthur-blessitt-the-world-s-farthest-walking-pilgrim-dies-at-84
Reflection
Think About It
• Where in your life right now are you doing good and seeing nothing come back — and how long has that been true? • What would it change if you believed the reaping was settled and only the timing was unknown? • What is one small good thing within reach of you today, that you could keep doing without any evidence yet that it matters?
Prayer
Father, You are faithful. Father, You are faithful. Father, You are faithful. You have not grown weary of me, though I have given You plenty of reason. When the work is unseen and the harvest is slow and I am tired in a way sleep does not fix, hold my hands to the small thing in front of me. I will not give up today — not because I am strong, but because You are, and You have promised a harvest at the proper time. Father, You are faithful. Father, You are faithful. Amen.
Live It Out
Pick one small thing to keep doing today, and ask God for strength for just that. Not the whole field, not the rest of the season — just today's portion, offered again.