Seeking Jesus First Feb. 16, 2026

Lift Up Your Eyes

Today’s Reading: John 4:35–36
(Read the full passage before reflecting below.)

“Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (John 4:35, NKJV)

Jesus has just told His disciples that His food is to do the will of the Father. Now He expands the vision.

The disciples think in agricultural timelines. Four months from planting to harvest. Natural process. Predictable sequence. Wait your turn.

Jesus interrupts their assumption.

Lift up your eyes.

This is not merely a change in direction—it is a change in perception.

While they were focused on bread and schedules, a Samaritan woman was running back to her city. Seeds had already been planted. Hearts were already stirring. The harvest was not months away—it was walking toward them.

The disciples were thinking naturally. Jesus was seeing spiritually.

“Lift up your eyes” means more than looking outward. It means adjusting what we expect God to do. It means refusing to measure spiritual reality by visible conditions. It means recognizing that God often moves faster than our assumptions.

The fields are already white.

White fields indicate readiness. Grain that is white is ripe. Delay too long, and it is lost. Jesus is teaching urgency—but not anxiety. The harvest is not manufactured by human effort; it is prepared by God.

This aligns with what we have already seen in John’s Gospel. A man can receive nothing unless it has been given from heaven. The Son does only what He sees the Father doing. And now the disciples are being invited into something that God has already set in motion.

The harvest in Samaria is not accidental. It is the result of divine initiative. The Father sent the Son. The Son spoke to the woman. The woman testified. And now a village is coming.

“He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.” (John 4:36)

Notice the language—eternal life.

The harvest Jesus speaks of is not grain; it is souls. It is men and women awakened to truth, drawn into belief, brought from darkness into light. The reward is not applause—it is participation in redemption.

There is also humility built into this vision. Reapers are not the originators of the harvest. Someone else sowed. God prepared. Others labored. We enter into what heaven has already begun.

This guards us from pride and discouragement alike.

If the field looks barren, we may not yet see what God has planted.
If the field looks fruitful, we must remember we did not plant alone.

“Lift up your eyes” is an invitation to see through heaven’s perspective.

Where have we assumed nothing is happening?
Where have we delayed obedience because we believed the timing was not right?
Where might God already be moving?

The Samaritan woman thought she came to draw water. The disciples thought they were fetching lunch. But heaven was orchestrating harvest.

Today, ask the Lord to lift your eyes.

There may be readiness where you expect resistance.
There may be hunger where you expect indifference.
There may be harvest where you assumed delay.

The fields are not empty.
They are white.

And the One who sends
is already at work.