Anyone who keeps a kitchen garden knows the feeling. For weeks you have watered the pepper plant in the pot by the back step. You have picked off the caterpillars, moved it out of the worst sun, and wondered if it was ever going to do anything. Then one morning there it is: a single pepper, turning red. It is only one. But it tells you the plant is alive and the rest are coming.
Farmers in the ancient world knew that feeling on a larger scale. The first sheaf of the harvest, the firstfruits, was brought to God as an offering and a promise. If the first grain was good, the whole field would follow.
The first of a great harvest
Paul uses that picture in his great chapter on the resurrection. The believers in Corinth accepted that Jesus had risen, but some doubted that they would. Paul answers:
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20, NKJV)
Jesus’ body was laid in the ground like a seed on Friday and raised on Sunday, new and glorious. He is the first ripe fruit. Everyone who belongs to Him will follow. Death is not the end of the story for the believer; it is the pause between sowing and harvest.
Paul finishes the chapter not with a doctrine but with an instruction about daily life:
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 15:58, NKJV)
Because Christ is risen, what we do in love is not wasted.
The work nobody counts
So much of the work of a home feels like it vanishes. The floor you mopped on Monday is muddy by Wednesday. The dinner that took an hour is eaten in ten minutes. The school uniforms are washed, ironed and dirty again. The ageing parent you care for may not remember that you visited. The teenager you pray for every night rolls their eyes at breakfast.
Think of a grandmother who has kept a family house for fifty years. She has cooked thousands of Sunday dinners, nursed children through fevers, taken in a nephew when his parents split up, and prayed for every name on a long list. None of it will appear in the newspaper. Much of it has been forgotten even by those who benefited. From the outside it might look like a life of small tasks endlessly repeated.
Paul says otherwise. Labour “in the Lord” is not in vain. The love poured into ordinary days is not lost. It is sown, like a seed, and the resurrection is God’s guarantee that seeds sown in Him will come up.
Love as the culture of heaven
There is another reason the work of love at home matters. Paul writes elsewhere that of faith, hope and love, “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Faith will one day become sight and hope will be fulfilled, but love goes on. It is the atmosphere of the world to come.
That means a home where people are patient with each other, where the stranger is welcomed and the difficult relative is forgiven, is in a small way rehearsing for eternity. The kitchen table where a family prays and laughs is a foretaste of the feast to come. The house itself will not last forever. Roofs rust and walls crack. But the love practised under that roof has a future.
Steadfast in the small things
“Be steadfast, immovable.” Those words suit a household well. Steadfastness is rarely dramatic. It is getting up to make breakfast when you are tired. It is apologising first. It is keeping the budget honest. It is visiting the neighbour who is sick. It is refusing to give up on a marriage going through a dry patch.
None of these feel like harvest when you are doing them. They feel like watering a plant that has not yet flowered. But the risen Christ is the first pepper on the plant, the sign that the rest are coming.
For reflection
- Which part of your work at home feels most wasted or unnoticed? How does 1 Corinthians 15:58 speak to it?
- Who in your family has quietly laboured in love for years, and how might you honour them this week?
A prayer
Risen Lord, thank You that You are the firstfruits and that death does not have the last word. When the work of this home feels small and unseen, remind me that nothing done in love for You is wasted. Make me steadfast in ordinary faithfulness, and let this house be a place where the love of heaven is practised now. Amen.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
Visit our YouTube Community ↗