Page 15 - Herald December 2024

OCTOBER 2024
THE NEW COUNTESTHORPE HERALD 15
NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE CHURCHES
HARVEST
All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above; then thank the Lord,
O thank the lord, for all his love. *
The nights are getting darker, there was even a frost the other morning. It really feels like Autumn and that means for the Churches it is Harvest Festival time.
The Churches will be decorated I am sure with flowers, fruit, vegetables, and increasingly tinned and packet food. Traditional hymns will be sung, thanks offered to God for all He provides, and prayers said for those who do not have enough.
As a child I remember Dad preparing shoe boxes, covered in silver foil packed full of produce from his allotment. We took these to Church, and we lined up with the rest of the Sunday School to take our boxes to the front of Church during the first hymn. As I got older, we went down to Church on the Monday after School and taking
different boxes that had been made up by “the ladies” in the afternoon round to elderly and housebound members of the congregation, all carefully packed into a bread tray that had been secured to the back of my bike.
The local bakery always made a loaf, shaped into a sheaf of corn with a mouse in the corner and this took pride of place on the communion table. When I moved to Yorkshire a piece of coal was placed on the communion table. This was long after all the pits had shut.
Harvest means different things to different people in various places. I remember one year at School we celebrated the Harvest of the sea, which for a school in Oxfordshire was a bit odd as we were a long way from the coast!
I have been to auctions where the items that have been donated have been auctioned off. A bar of chocolate raised £5 once. The money was then given to charity. I have eaten various flavours of soup, which had been made from the items that had been donated, and one year for the Harvest meal, we had a rich person, poor person meal. One person round the table was given a two-course meal and the rest had very watery soup. It was all random, depending on where you sat and I had the rich person’s meal. It is a few years ago now, but I can still remember how awkward that felt.
I wonder what memories of Harvest you have, whether from attending Church, at School or some other organisation.
As I have said, increasingly the displays in Churches are made up of tinned and packaged goods which are then donated to local foodbanks to help local people
and although the displays do not look as “pretty” they are certainly needed.
For me, I think Harvest should be split over two weeks, with the first week being a time to thank God for all he provides for us, for our food, friends, family, homes, jobs, schools and so much more, but mainly for God’s faithfulness through all the seasons, that we have got to another Harvest. The second week we should then focus on those who do not have enough, whether in this country or abroad, and what our response to helping them should be, from praying, donating to a local food bank, how we spend our money, to how we vote.
It is good to have these special times of year but shouldn’t thanking God and caring for other people be part of our everyday lives?
Accept the gifts we offer for all your love imparts, and what you most desire - our humble, thankful hearts. * Deacon Sharon Dilley
Methodist Church
*Words from ‘We plough the fields and scatter’. Matthias Claudius (1740-1815)
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