Readings:
Ezekiel 18: 1-4, 25-end;
Psalm 25: 1-8
Philippians 2: 1-13;
Matthew 21: 23-32

Collect:
Lord of creation,
whose glory is around and within us:
open our eyes to your wonders,
that we may serve you with reverence
and know your peace at our lives’ end,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Reflection

As the Autumn days begin to draw in and the weather starts to turn I’m reminded of a song we used to sing in school and its chorus ‘…to say a great big thank-you, I mustn’t forget’.  This weekend would usually find us gathering to say a great big Thank You to God for the harvest but sadly this like many things this year we are having to change what we normally would do.  So we will be celebrating Harvest with our Messy Church service this week and our Creationtide service next Sunday, both online.  It certainly won’t be the same but as the song goes ‘we mustn’t forget to say a great big thank you!’

During the heart of lockdown, many of us stood on our doorsteps at 8pm on a Thursday evening to clap for carers.  It was our small way of saying Thank You!  This harvest time it’s important for us to once again say thank you not only to God for the wonder and beauty of creation but to our farmers and all who’ve worked tirelessly through the pandemic to bring us our daily bread.  

We so often take it for granted that if we run out of something, all we need to do is pop to the shops.  If I fancy some chocolate and we haven’t got any in the house, I’ll just pop to the shop.  If we run out of milk, we just pop to the shops.  It’s something we’ve always been lucky enough to do and almost always the shops will have exactly what we need.  For the first time in my lifetime this year I found that I couldn’t just pop to the shops and get what I wanted. For what seemed like months it was hard to get hold of flour or pasta. I will never forget the sight of empty shelves in the supermarkets, something I’d only seen on the news before.  Some of us were not able to go to a shop for months because they were told to shield, relying on others to provide them with their daily bread. 

Throughout lockdown the farmers carried on working hard to provide us with the food that we need, just like they do every year.  However, for many farmers this year has been a struggle.  The beginning of the year saw heavy floods, with many of the winter crops destroyed and caused a delay to the spring sowing.  This was followed by a very dry spring and summer causing the crops not to flourish as well as they might.  Then due to the pandemic there were problems in gathering in the harvest, with the government encouraging those on furlough to go and help to bring in the harvest.  So all in all, not a great year for our farming community.  It is therefore vital that this Harvest we remember are Farmers and say a great big Thank You!

Harvest is one of my favorite times of the year, I have fond memories of helping grandad and my uncle bring in the harvest.  One of my jobs was stacking the bails of hay onto the trailer, making sure that they were good and sturdy because I would be riding on the top back to the barn.  Even though it always set off my asthma, there was nothing I enjoyed more than bringing in the harvest.  Then we’d go gathering the harvest from the fruit trees picking damsons and plums, pears and apples trying desperately to get the best fruit from the top of the trees.  All the family would join in and there would be much fun and laughter. 

It’s easy for us living in a city to forget about the harvest, and yet we only need to take a walk along many of our red ways to see the abundance of blackberries this year and on the edge of the city you can glimpse the farmers at work gathering in their crops providing us with the food that we need.

Let us this Harvest find new ways of giving thanks.  Maybe you could have a special meal and give thanks to God for the food you have been given, and for the farmers who have grown it.  You may like to download here a poster produced by the Arthur Rank Centre to display in your window showing your appreciation for the farming community.

Whatever you do to mark this harvest season let us never forget to say a great big Thank You to God for our daily bread and for those who bring it to our tables.

Mike Morris