What harvest is God inviting you to bring forth? Through Anna Archer’s Harvesters and the words of Meister Eckhart, we reflect on how prayer cultivates the divine seed within us. As that seed grows, it bears fruit in loving action—the true harvest of the soul.

Matthew 9:36-38

In this episode of Art and Prayer, we explore how contemplative prayer cultivates divine love within us and leads to fruitful action in the world. Drawing from the wisdom of Meister Eckhart, who said, “What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action,” we consider how the life of prayer and the life of service are inseparably intertwined. Through prayer, we draw near to God—and in doing so, we begin to long to do the work of God.

Our visual focus is Anna Archer’s Harvesters, a painting that captures both the beauty and the gravity of the harvest season. Archer, a Danish painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was known for depicting the quiet dignity of ordinary life. Her scenes of daily labor—women, fishermen, farmers, and worshippers—invite us to see holiness in human work. In Harvesters, the simple act of gathering grain becomes a meditation on life and death, abundance and completion, effort and reward.

Eckhart reminds us that the harvest is not only the final gathering of souls at the world’s end, but also the daily work of cultivating the divine seed within us. Each act of love, each moment of compassion, becomes a fruit of that seed’s growth. Through contemplation, we nurture this inner life of God; through action, we share its abundance with others.

As we meditate on Harvesters and on Jesus’ words from Matthew 9—“The harvest is bountiful but the laborers are few”—we are invited to discern our own role in the divine harvest. What fruit is God calling us to bear in this season? What work of love is ours to do?

Prayer, like the harvest, is both abundance and effort. It fills our spiritual barns with strength for the difficult seasons ahead, and it moves us to act with love and compassion. May this time of reflection renew your awareness of the divine seed within you, and inspire you to cultivate it with joy and purpose.