Words for Worship

Ministry Today

Harvest  talk

On holiday we visited two very interesting museums. The first was Pictavia at Brechin. There we saw historians’ ideas of what the ancient Pictish lifestyle was. And what a hard life it must have been. For the weather of our July and august reminds us of the risks to the harvest due to Scotland’s often unpredictable climate. But in those far of days a bad harvest literally meant the difference between life and death. Yet the Pictish standing stones, erected over 1400 years ago, shows us that they had a strong faith in Jesus; a king they always saw as the giver of the harvest.

The second museum was the folk museum at Glamis. It is built out of a row of cottages which have been knocked together. Its first exhibition room is the gentile parlour of the manse and then it progresses through a variety of displays including a kitchen, a weaver’s shop, a school room and a laundry. But once again we see signs of our ancestors’ faith. For one of the rooms has been made into a mock up of a farm worker’s single room that served as a kitchen cum living room cum bedroom complete with box beds. And In one of these, there is an old lady depicted as taking her well earned rest while still reading her bible. Faith then was strong in the hardship of rural life of even a few decades ago; a life that too understood the risks of a poor harvest; a life nevertheless that unstintingly gave praise to the sure giver of our daily food – Jesus Christ.

Well today, a bad harvest for all in Britain at least means that no will starve. Tesco’s & Sainsbury’s will still have selves full of delicious fare. Yet while we rejoice at in this certainty of food, it seems that by no longer relying on our own fields for sustenance we also no longer think we rely on our Lord for our living.

Let us then remember the people of old’s faith and their example of lives well led in response to God’s good gifts. Moreover, let not our complacency in the more certain harvest of today’s good things prevent us giving due thanks to his son at this and every harvest time. For anything less would be ungracious!

Amen