Isaiah 28:23-29

23-26Listen to me now. Give me your closest attention.Do farmers plow and plow and do nothing but plow? Or harrow and harrow and do nothing but harrow?After they've prepared the ground, don't they plant? Don't they scatter dill and spread cumin,Plant wheat and barley in the fields and raspberries along the borders?They know exactly what to do and when to do it. Their God is their teacher.
27-29And at the harvest, the delicate herbs and spices, the dill and cumin, are treated delicately.On the other hand, wheat is threshed and milled, but still not endlessly. The farmer knows how to treat each kind of grain.He's learned it all from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, who knows everything about when and how and where.

The writer is drawing an analogy between the Lord's treatment of his various "crops" (peoples) and the farmer in his field. The farmer does not till his dirt forever, but just until it is properly prepared. Sometimes that soil requires the picking out of rocks, sometimes it takes extra nutrition in the form of fertilizers and amendments to support its crop. Each field is different and each crop is different. So preparation varies but the end result will be the same if a farmer prepares his land according to the requirements of the crop he has purposed to grow.
I need to be patient with others and with myself as each person in my life is a different "field" in an individual sense, as well as in a corporate sense of church family, government, nation, world. We are all at different places in life. Just as some crops will grow in Bakersfield's heat and thrive, others will shrivel and die if planted in the wrong time and place. Tomatos flourish in abundance in summer here, but fuscias, if they manage to survive the heat of summer, will die in the cold of the valley winters.

What a beautiful description of God's timing as he plants, nurtures, and harvests at so many different junctures in time, not as a commercial farmer would plough a field and then harvest one determinate crop at one time, but rather as a home gardner walks through his or her garden daily, pulling a weed here, watering a little extra there, watching each tomato or cucumber or pumpkin come into it's peak of flavor and ripeness before the harvest moment.
Father, I ask you to pull me back to the small garden where I can be effective, planting, weeding, and harvesting the crop in my plot rather than trying to plant huge fields which I cannot manage. Help me to be content with my garden, dilligent in its care, and vigilant to protect, nurture and care for the blessings of fruit that you allow me to harvest in Your time.