It is harvest time now, but there is no harvest among us. For we yield not just a visible harvest, but also a harvest of rational souls and a spiritual harvest, and in these cases the season of harvest is all the year round. As we stand now within this holy place, let us raise our heads a little higher, put our hopes in God and, lifting up our minds, consider the human and spiritual harvest. I shall now say a few words on this subject to your charity, to provide you with a starting point for salvation. Every year when this season comes round and I see the mass of people streaming out of town to work at harvesting or gathering and collecting fruit, I think to myself as follows. "Given that there is also a harvest of men which cuts them off from this present, fleeting, transitory life and transfers them to a different life which lasts for ever, do any of those harvesting inanimate ears of wheat or employing others to do so, or any of those picking fruit, or buying fruit picked by others to store it in barns, remember that harvest which will come upon them? Do any of them seek to be declared beloved by the Husbandman of our souls and worthy of His heavenly storehouses and mansions when the time comes? Or do they all have their minds bent down to the ground, like the bodies of people digging, not lifting up their thoughts and rising above earthly things?"
If it is so, we are no different from the heathen, whose mental and bodily powers are completely occupied with earthly concerns. They take no account of things to come, and obviously neither believe in, nor have any concept of, heavenly matters. That is why, according to Scripture, the wicked man's whole life is spent in worrying about things below which perish (cf. Job 15:20 Lxx). When Christ told us in the Gospels, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on" (Matt. 6:25), He added, "For after all these things do the Gentiles seek" (Matt. 6:32). Do not leave your work, but stop being anxious about it, putting your hope in God instead, that you may neither regard your toil as hopeless, nor wrongly put your trust in it. "Take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? or, what shall we drink? or, wherewithal shall we be clothed" (Matt. 6:31), thinking constantly about these matters as if you were refusing to accept the accusation that awaits you, and were dragging your soul down in the direction of earthly cares, without allowing them to look up.
God arranged our nature as He did so that whether our body was at rest, or moving, or going from one place to another, or doing whatever it had to do, our thoughts could be on other things. We use our bodies for physical work, but with our souls we look up to God and ask Him for heavenly blessings. Having told us not to take thought for our lives, as that was a characteristic of the heatben, He went on to say, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 6:33), to show that if your soul's attention is on God, you will not as a result lack anything the body needs. Rather, you will unfailingly have everything it requires, as well as your soul's salvation, through the generosity of Him Who opens His hand and fills every living creature with His blessing. To Him David said, "Thou hast made harvest time and spring" (Ps. 74: 17 Lxx), meaning not only the visible seasons, but the spiritual. That is why he mentioned harvest before spring, because unless you are first cut off from unbelieving and depraved people and actions, you will not blossom with the virtues.
St. Gregory Palamas - from Homily 26 - Saint Tikhon's Seminary Press