There is a passage of scripture that has always struck me as a bit odd….
Cast your bread upon the waters,
for after many days you will find it again.Ecclesiastes 11:1
Now, I’ve fed ducks in local ponds. I’ve fed geese. I’ve even fed fish by throwing bread in the water. Sometimes the animals don’t eat it. More than often they do. I’ve heard this passage preached in the sense of what good you do today will somehow come back on you as a blessing. It’s always seemed to me like some kind of karmic ideology within scripture that what we do comes back to us like a cosmic boomerang of goodness.
Well, I am not a believer in karma and I’ve never had a boomerang actually come back to me no matter how I threw it.
What is the meaning behind this passage?
Apparently, during the rainy season rivers would run at flood stage, ground would become muddy, and it generally wasn’t pleasant weather to do much of anything in, much less sow seed. Now sometimes, the flood stages of a river would last through the entire “prime” planting season. If you threw your seed into the water, it could be washed downstream or eaten by fish and other animals.
So what about casting your bread upon the waters?
To sow your grain in flood waters was something done in faith. There was no guarantee that you would ever reap a harvest from it. To do good whether it seems beneficial to you or not. When you sow a seed in faith, you reap more than just the plant of that seed. You will reap faith, because our faith is strengthened not by mere belief, but in putting faith to work in our lives.
Verse 6 finishes up that section of scripture:
Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.
