PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING, FATHER, WE OFFER
When we first moved to Ludgvan in July, the maize in the field in front of the Rectory Garden was just about knee-high. Since then, after all the sun and the rain, it has shot up in height and is over seven feet tall! Now the maize completely dwarfs us and it will soon be time to gather in and harvest this good, strong crop. For those with allotments, much of the hard work over this past year will also be coming to fruition soon. In some sense, the Celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving each Autumn in Church is a bit artificial. Those with winter crops have yet to harvest their benefits, those with cows are ‘gathering in’ their ‘harvest’ of milk everyday and the farmers around us, it seems, are always ‘planting’ and ‘gathering’ and their work is never done.
Not just out in the fields around us, but also in the Church too, Harvest is a time of ‘gathering in’: Harvest-time is about the ‘gathering in’ of people too. It is one of our big Festivals of the year. As we bring our gifts of food to the altar, the Harvest Thanksgiving Service will be celebrated at Perranuthnoe on Sunday 27 September at 11.15 am.
As well as celebrating the gifts of the Harvest and the gifts of God’s bountiful Creation, it is a time in the year when we also ‘gather in’ and ‘gather around’ and give thanks to God for the gift of each other too. As the Summer days turn to Autumn, preparations are well under way for an entertaining and great Harvest Supper feast for us, and St Hilary, at St Piran's Hall where we can all join in and share together on Friday 2 October.
This time of ‘praise and thanksgiving’, this time when we bring to God the gifts of his creation, is a very natural thing for us to do. Not only are we marking the changing of the seasons, as the days grow shorter, but, since ancient times, the first fruits of the Harvest were brought to the Temple as a ‘thanks offering’ to God for all his provision to us (Deuteronomy 26). It is very natural for us to want to thank God, The Great Provider and Sustainer of all our lives. It is good in the Christian Calendar each year that we have one time in the year when we pause and take stock and we give thanks for all God’s many blessings to us, for ‘all God’s gifts around us’ and to thank him for ‘our life, our health, our food’.
One of my favourite Harvest Hymns is sung to the tune ‘Morning has broken’:
‘Praise and thanksgiving, Father, we offer,
For all things living you have made good;
Harvest of sown fields, fruits of the orchard,
Hay from the mown fields, blossom and wood’.
May we all enjoy this time of ‘gathering in’ and Harvest, this time of praise and thanksgiving to God, for all his bountifulness and goodness to us.
Every blessing,
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: St Piran's & St Michael's, Perranuthnoe
When we first moved to Ludgvan in July, the maize in the field in front of the Rectory Garden was just about knee-high. Since then, after all the sun and the rain, it has shot up in height and is over seven feet tall! Now the maize completely dwarfs us and it will soon be time to gather in and harvest this good, strong crop. For those with allotments, much of the hard work over this past year will also be coming to fruition soon. In some sense, the Celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving each Autumn in Church is a bit artificial. Those with winter crops have yet to harvest their benefits, those with cows are ‘gathering in’ their ‘harvest’ of milk everyday and the farmers around us, it seems, are always ‘planting’ and ‘gathering’ and their work is never done.
Not just out in the fields around us, but also in the Church too, Harvest is a time of ‘gathering in’: Harvest-time is about the ‘gathering in’ of people too. It is one of our big Festivals of the year. As we bring our gifts of food to the altar, the Harvest Thanksgiving Service will be celebrated at Perranuthnoe on Sunday 27 September at 11.15 am.
As well as celebrating the gifts of the Harvest and the gifts of God’s bountiful Creation, it is a time in the year when we also ‘gather in’ and ‘gather around’ and give thanks to God for the gift of each other too. As the Summer days turn to Autumn, preparations are well under way for an entertaining and great Harvest Supper feast for us, and St Hilary, at St Piran's Hall where we can all join in and share together on Friday 2 October.
This time of ‘praise and thanksgiving’, this time when we bring to God the gifts of his creation, is a very natural thing for us to do. Not only are we marking the changing of the seasons, as the days grow shorter, but, since ancient times, the first fruits of the Harvest were brought to the Temple as a ‘thanks offering’ to God for all his provision to us (Deuteronomy 26). It is very natural for us to want to thank God, The Great Provider and Sustainer of all our lives. It is good in the Christian Calendar each year that we have one time in the year when we pause and take stock and we give thanks for all God’s many blessings to us, for ‘all God’s gifts around us’ and to thank him for ‘our life, our health, our food’.
One of my favourite Harvest Hymns is sung to the tune ‘Morning has broken’:
‘Praise and thanksgiving, Father, we offer,
For all things living you have made good;
Harvest of sown fields, fruits of the orchard,
Hay from the mown fields, blossom and wood’.
May we all enjoy this time of ‘gathering in’ and Harvest, this time of praise and thanksgiving to God, for all his bountifulness and goodness to us.
Every blessing,
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: St Piran's & St Michael's, Perranuthnoe
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