One of my earworms this summer has been The Combine Harvester Song
(Brand New Key) by the Wurzels, which has to be one of the oddest
proposals in history! Another, more traditional harvest song that you
may hear over the coming months is one of my favourites from school,
'Autumn Days'.
'Autumn Days' like many harvest songs lists things that we like or
enjoy (although some of them, like 'jet planes meeting in the air to
be refuelled' and 'the song the milkman sings' are rather quaint
nowadays!) and says “thank you” for them. Thanksgiving is of
course one of the main themes of harvest time, and gratitude is a
very important habit to cultivate, but it only recently occurred to
me that 'Autumn Days' doesn't actually say who we're thanking for
these things! This of course makes it an almost perfect song for a
multi-cultural, multi-faith society as everyone can sing it together
and the singer decides for themselves who they're thanking. For
religious people it will be their particular deity, for non-religious
people it will be other people.
This non-committal thanksgiving is in contrast with the common
exclamation “Thank God!” which is used by those who say they are
atheists almost as much as by those who do believe in God. It is
often used in situations where the outcome has been something which
is beyond human control, or has been unlikely, or as an expression of
relief. Militant atheists would no doubt claim that such
exclamations are a cultural hangover from the time when most people
believed in God, and there is no doubt that often the phrase is used
unconsciously, but I think there is a deeper explanation.
Our inclination to be thankful is a deeply ingrained realisation that
we cannot do everything by ourselves, that we rely on other people
for our continued existence. Being grateful and showing our
appreciation to others may be evolutionarily beneficial to us (if we
don't say thank you we might not get that help again) but it also
satisfies our longing to treat others as we ourselves would like to
be treated. It recognises that other people are not a random
collection of atoms whose only use is to be of benefit to us, but
that they are fellow humans and therefore worthy of respect.
But
there is also a recognition that there are things which are out of
human control. Psalm 19:1 says “The heavens declare
the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” And
Paul writes in Romans 1:20 “since the creation of the world God’s
invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature –
have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so
that people are without excuse.” He says that this knowledge should
remind us to thank him for his love for us. We enjoy the fruits of
the harvest, but sometimes forget that he has given them to us.
Harvest is a time to
thank those, near and far, who help to make our lives better, but
most importantly it is a time to think about all the things God
blesses us with and to say a heartfelt “Thank God!”
