Harvest of what?
We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land
Well, not us. Not for some time either.
We don’t get our hands dirty,
preferring instead to buy pre packaged,
pre- washed, pre- prepared everything,
from sliced white bread to
ready chopped carrots .
Never mind that our choices
are flown half way across the world.
We like quality.
And, on occasion, we’ll even pay for it.
Harvest is something we’re prepared to leave to others.
The physical harvest –
Is someone else’s worry.
If the weather’s bad.
If crops fail.
We’ll simply shop elsewhere,
Move on, pay more.
We certainly won’t starve.
We’ve not been that close to the land for a long time now.
It’s nothing new.
To reflect modern life,
contemporary culture.
Perhaps our harvest celebration
needs revamped.
Needs to reflect our experience.
Of work and toil.
Our experince
Of sweat and tears.
Isn’t harvest about celebrating our gift,
our skills,
All that God has given us
To make life good?
Isn’t it about
giving thanks for the comparative luxury we know.
And that we protect at all costs.
That’s so far removed from work on the land
So can’t we find another way to celebrate?
We plough the fields and scatter?
Not us, not any more.
Come, ye thankful people come
Raise the strain of harvest home
Oh yes.
It’s good to give thanks once a year.
Thanks for all those little luxuries.
Thanks for God’s blessings.
Once a year
It’s good to give thanks.
For the Lord our God shall come
And shall take his harvest home
Now that’s sounding a different note.
God harvesting people.
But we won’t worry too much about that.
We’re simply here to give our thanks for now.
Don’t need to worry about the future at harvest.
We’ll just celebrate the present.
And leave the future to God.
That’s part of harvest too, isn’t it
That God takes care of the future.
Come, ye thankful people come
Raise the strain of harvest home
Moving on:
For the fruits of all creation
Thanks be to God
We’ll celebrate all that we can see around us
We’ll congratulate ourselves on being so well off
That we can sing heartily the words:
In our world wide task of caring
God’s will is done
In the harvest we are sharing
God’s will is done
Yet, to make our words ring true today
We have to see beyond our shiny colourful display of fruit
To the responsibility that God places
on each of us
To make the kind of harvest we celebrate
Alive with meaning for the world
for those who’ll sleep rough tonight
alive with meaning
for those who will go to bed hungry
for the poor all around us
and, yes alive with meaning
in Iraq and Afghanistan
in Sumatra and Zimbabwe
in all the hovels where God’s children are to be found
that in creation there is more than enough to go around
if we could only share.
And so, in our plenty,
it’s not that we should waste time on feeling guilty
but that we should turn God’s goodness to us
into a call to serve the world
by our sharing
Our God, who stretched out the heavens
and created everything in wisdom
relies on us
to care
and gives us what we need
to do just that
symbol of all the goodness of God
we will take our fruit,
symbol of the power of God
we will take our fruit
symbol of the call of God
we will give thanks
and we will share
from our place of plenty
we will give thanks to the God of the harvest
and we will share God’s food for God’s world.
5 comments:
wow... awesome stuff... I'm off to think now!!! thanks for the post :)
Cheers, Nik. I posted late because I wasn't sure it was worth posting - so thanks for encouragement!
I love this, thank you.
Hi. Would you mind if we read this in church on Sunday morning? 26/9/10.
Ruth, More than happy for you to use this. blessings,
Liz
Post a Comment