MK Gantt Ministries

Many years ago when our children were quite young, my wife talked me into taking her to a “Pick Your Own Strawberry” field. Now, I need to tell you that as a tall man, picking strawberries is not one of my favorite activities. But, I love my wife and I wanted to make her happy, so off to the strawberry patch we went. 

At that time, we had two children. The youngest, Robyn, was wreaking havoc in that field of strawberries. She picked a lot . . . and ate all of them. What she wasn’t eating, she was crushing under her feet. It was hot . . . I mean really hot, and the sun was baking me as I alternated between picking berries and rescuing them from my rambunctious little girl. I was sure the owner of that farm was up in his little shed with a rifle taking aim at my daughter to protect his berries. 

Sweat ran into my eyes and down my back, my knees were killing me, my back was hurting, and I was sure that Robyn was going to singlehandedly destroy that field of ripe berries.

A few rows away, my wife was happily filling up her little baskets with the luscious berries, doing what she loves to do best, work in the dirt. I called to her and said, “I don’t mind an afternoon of picking berries, but I sure wouldn’t want to do this for a living.”

Looking up from her work, she swiped her forehead, and shielding her eyes from the sun, my wise wife said, “That’s because it’s not your field.”

Those words did not just go into my ears; they went straight to my heart. They were like a sudden clap of thunder on a hot, summer afternoon. I sat there in that strawberry patch, watching my little girl gleefully run up and down the rows as thick red juice ran around her mouth and down onto her shirt and realized that my wife had just taught me the difference between servanthood and sonship.

It was at that moment that I realized that I had been engaging in the work of the kingdom as a servant, not as a son. A servant does what he must. He does not own the field; he has no vested interest in the field, he doesn’t care about that field or its bounty. He is interested in payday. 

When a son looks out over that same field, he is gazing at his future, his inheritance. A son looks at that field with very different eyes than does a servant. 

As I sat there in the dirt pondering this wonderful revelation, I started to imagine myself as a slave laboring under the whip of a terrible and cruel taskmaster; serving only enough to escape the whip. Life was brutal and oppressive until one day I was taken to the auction block in the slave market to be sold like any piece of farm equipment. 

I imagined that I was purchased by a kind and generous man who, after paying the price to the slave auctioneer, gently removed the shackles from my ankles and brought me into his wagon for the journey back to his plantation. There I was introduced to my new home. It was clean and dry. The food was nutritious and filling; I had all I wanted to eat. Stunned, I was given reasonable work hours and treated kindly by my new master. From that moment, I no longer served to avoid the whip –– for there was no whip. 

Now, I served to please my good and gracious master. I wanted to stay with him and dreaded the day he might choose to sell me to another master, less kind and less generous than himself. I worked hard, fulfilled my tasks in a timely fashion, and endeavored to make sure they were done properly. I had a good thing going here, and I didn’t want to ruin it. 

In my vision, I was called to the master’s house. As I walked into the palatial halls of that magnificent home, I was fearful of the reasons I had been summoned. Had I somehow displeased my owner? Was I going to be punished –– or sold? What was to become of me? 

I stood in trembling disbelief as I heard my master say, “You are no longer my servant.”  What I had feared most was coming to pass. But, my fear was short-lived as his words continued, “I have grown to love you and have made arrangements to adopt you. You will no longer be my servant. From this moment forward, you are my son. Everything I have now belongs to you.”

Sitting in the hot sun in the middle of a strawberry patch overlooking the Connecticut River, the idea of sonship exploded in my mind. I no longer slept in servant’s quarters. I no longer ate with the hired help. I slept in my father’s house and ate at his table. As I stood on the front porch of what was now my home, my inheritance, I looked over the fields that stretched on for what seemed to be forever and thought, “All of this is mine!”

Now, this is what I want you to see. A son works in the same fields as the servants do, but he sees those fields with different eyes. He is up and in the fields before the hirelings, and he is there long after they have retired for the night. He works harder. He works longer. He is engaged with his father long into the night as they plan for the future –– new fields, new crops, new enterprises. As he lies in the bed at night, he dreams of the expansion of his inheritance and the new ventures they will explore. He is not a servant. He is a son. 

I stood there in that strawberry patch, tears mingling with the sweat on my face as I silently looked down the Connecticut River Valley and for the first time I did not see it with the eyes of a servant, but with the eyes of a son.

A son of God.