10Sep
Once again the year is flying by and we are already turning our thoughts to autumn. In our churches that means we are preparing to celebrate Harvest Festival together. It is still a very popular feast in the Church calendar, reminding us of God’s generous and bountiful gifts. The custom of Harvest Festivals goes right back to the Jewish tradition, when people were required to bring the first fruits of their labours to the priest as a thanks offering to God for another year’s harvest. As we continue this tradition in a more modern way, we fill our churches with wheatsheaves, fruit, flowers, vegetables and so on, as well as tinned and packet foods, to celebrate this year’s harvest that has been safely gathered in.
At one Harvest Festival I conducted a few years ago, the church was crowded with both children and parents, and the children were asked to suggest the names of various foods beginning with all the letters of the alphabet. The children were really quick off the mark: A for apple, B for bread, C for cauliflower and so on. But when they got to the letter Q, the silence was deafening. Suddenly, one little girl shot her hand up in the air, and, to the delight of the congregation and utter embarrassment of her mother, she proudly proclaimed: ‘Q is for cucumber!’ So often we take our food for granted. We turn up at the supermarket and take things off the shelves and purchase all manner of things to fill our fridges, our freezers, and our cupboards without giving a thought as to where it comes from or how it got to us. 11 Perhaps it is only when we cannot afford to buy the food we need, or perhaps when there is no food because of drought or flood and so on, that we really begin to think about it. These days, the produce collected at our harvest festivals is donated to foodbanks or local refuge centres, so that those who don’t have enough can be fed and fed well. The most important aspect of a harvest festival is to give thanks to God who provides us with the soil, the rain, the seed and the sunshine, which all combine and work together to bring food to our tables.
It is important, too, to thank, and pray for, our farmers and everyone who works in our food industries to produce such wonderful food. I don’t know about you, but I was always brought up to say Grace, a prayer of thanks, before a meal – to thank God for the food in front of me. It is a discipline that I continue still today – and have done through school and home, and even college. It reminds me that it is only by the grace of God that I have food to eat. It reminds me of all those who don’t have enough and encourages me to help those who are in need. If you don’t already do that, why not give it a go. Better still, why not go along to a church Harvest Festival near you over the next few weeks. Ours is on Sunday 29th September at St Faiths’ Church. We all have something to be thankful for, so let’s join together in thanking God for all his good gifts and help those who most need it at the same time. You might just be surprised how much things have changed since you were small.
Rev Rosemary Maskell
01603 898258
