We’re not at the time of year where both Britain and America have celebrated their crops – in Britain, we had Harvest Festival in October, while America celebrated Thanksgiving this week.
Thanksgiving is a much bigger affair, but Harvest Festival, nonetheless, gets a good airing in schools and churches. I think it’s important because it’s a moment to share love for some groups of people who are often forgotten about.
1. Love for the poor
Harvest Festival is massively focussed on the poor. It’s a time when families all over the country send kids to school with tins and packets for the food bank, and it’s a time when churchgoers are encouraged to give extra.
And it comes at a pivotal moment for food banks, in the run-up to winter when demand is about to spike as those in difficult situations face a trade-off between heating bills and food.
The festival explicitly connects the the bounty of the harvest with showing love towards others. It sits neatly with God’s instructions to the Israelites, telling them “not wholly reap the corners of your field [but] “leave them for the poor and for the stranger” (Leviticus 23:22 NKJV).
Most of us are not farmers any more, but what are the “harvests” in our lives? How can we “not wholly reap the corners of your field” and help those who are suffering?
2. Love for farmers
Farmers have difficult, dirty and tiring jobs with fluctuating incomes and feel that politicians don’t listen. “We’ve had the worst harvest ever just now for cereals: no sunlight in June, poor planting last autumn, the perfect storm, floods – [income] will go down next year,” Olly Harrison, who farms cereal near Liverpool, told The Guardian this month.
Our connection with farmers has mostly been lost because people tend to live outside the countryside and buy from supermarkets. But Harvest Festival is a time in the year to celebrate and consider the producers of our food.
How, as Christians, can we show love to those who nurture our food?
3. Love for creation
Harvest Festival is an opportunity to close the laptop and look into nature, which we are called to steward.
Writing in Romans 8, Paul talks about the entirety of creation groaning – a prescient passage considering all the worries about the environment that people have. It’s a passage that people have found difficult to interpret, but Tom Wright explains:
How easy would it be for a Christian to think, well, of course the world is in a mess; people after all are sinful and deserve God’s wrath; but we Christians are just fine, and anyway we’ll be leaving this place before too long. No! The church is groaning at the heart of the groaning of creation. And that isn’t an accident. It’s where we are called to be. Standing in this place is our vocation, one key element in the present wise stewardship which, as redeemed humans, we are to exercise over creation.
How can we, as individuals, show better stewardship of creation?
4. Love God
We should thank God for the abundant food we have because, 1 Timothy 6 says, God “richly provides us with all things to enjoy”.
In the classic Harvest Festival hymn “We plow the fields and scatter”, we sing:
We thank You, our Creator, for all things bright and good:
The seedtime and the harvest, our life, our health, our food.
Accept the gifts we offer for all Your love imparts;
Accept what You most welcome: our humble, thankful hearts!
Humans tend to believe their successes are down to their own efforts, but the hymn attempts to rebalance our credit giving back towards God.
How can we show our love towards God for the many blessings we have?
* * *
Prayer
Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and you give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
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