1 Corinthians 3:9: You Are the Field

For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

1 Corinthians 3:9 (NIV)

You Are the Field

Row F of the hospital lot faces west, so every windshield is a white sheet and you can’t see who’s in any of the cars. In one of them a man in his fifties has the engine off and the window down, and he’s been there since half past five with the evening going on around him. His sister is leaning against the door with her arms folded, and she’s been there nearly as long. She’s been up to the fourth floor twice today and she’ll go again before visiting hours end. He drove four hours to get here and hasn’t gone in, and neither of them has used the word afraid. She’s stopped asking him to come up. He turns the keys over in his hand.

The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and each of them will be rewarded according to his own labor. Paul counts himself among the workers there. The Corinthians he calls something different, God’s field and God’s building.

For a long time I read this as a verse about getting along with the people you serve alongside. Then I saw where Paul puts the Corinthians, out on the ground where the growing happens.

Nobody in Row F is planting anything. The two of them are the ground, and so is the man four floors up, and God is working all three of them. If you’re the field, God does the growing, and an evening you spent doing nothing useful was a working evening for him. He was at it while the light went orange on the windshields.

At ten past six she pushes off the car door. She’s halfway across the row when he says her name. “Tell him I’m in the lot,” he says. “Tell him I’m in the blue car in Row F, and he can look out the window if he wants to see me.”