What the sunshine on Leith proclaims

Here's my October article:

Photo by Linda https://occasionalscotland.blogspot.com/2013/12/sunshine-on-leith.html

Traditionally, harvest festivals are celebrated around September or October, although different crops are harvested at different times of the year.   And in a year like the one we've had, some harvests came early and some barely came at all.  Whatever time of year is actually harvest time, our harvest festivals give us the chance to think about where our food comes from and the people that produce our food, and also the beauty of the natural world.

I started thinking about harvest earlier this year, surprisingly whilst writing the June article about football!   Writing of football chants I mentioned the song “Sunshine on Leith” by The Proclaimers, and of course I had to listen to it a few times (as I'm also doing now!)  The song is about heartbreak and finding love again and nothing really to do with harvest.   However, it contains the lyrics “While the Chief puts sunshine on Leith / I'll thank Him for His work / And your birth, and my birth.”

The Proclaimers, Charlie and Craig Reid, acknowledge their Christian roots and so the reference to 'the Chief' is a reference to God and his work includes his creation, in particular human life and the sunshine on Leith.  The reason it made me think of harvest is that the song expresses gratitude to the Chief for his works, and thanking God for his creation is an important part of what we do in our harvest festivals.

We thank God for the world he has made and for all his love and care expressed in the world, and what a world that is!  Because God doesn't just provide us with a place to exist in – he has made it beautiful as well.  Mountains, oceans, forests and deserts are not necessary for our existence, but God has given them to us to delight in.   Indeed the rest of the universe is not necessary for our survival, but it shows God's abundant love for us.  What's more, he could have designed us to be able to survive on one plant and water, but instead he gives us a huge variety of things to eat and drink which doesn't just provide our bodies with necessary nutrition - it tastes good too!

The pinnacle of his creation is humanity, made in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27), and turning a 'good' world into a 'very good' world (compare what God 'sees' at the end of the sixth day [Genesis 1:31] with all the other days.)  We can celebrate all our complexity, and especially our capacity for love.  However, as we also acknowledge in our harvest festivals, our sinfulness leads us to misuse all of creation, including each other.  But the abundant love of God is shown not just in creation but in Jesus dying so we can be forgiven (Romans 5:8).

So while God continues to put sunshine (and all weathers) on his creation, whilst he sustains it by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3), let it remind us to thank him for all his works, including you and me.

Thanking God for The Wurzels and Autumn Days

Here's my article for the Septmber magazine:

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!”

Gardening and life

Here is my article from the August parish magazine:

If you've seen the garden at the Vicarage you'll know that I'm not a particularly good or industrious gardener. However, to misuse a quote from the Bible “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”! (The original quote is about falling into temptation, see Matthew 26:38). In my head, I have lots of ideas of things I'll do with the garden but a short supply of time and inclination means that that is as far as my ideas go! I can just about keep on top of the lawns and even occasionally attempt to plant something!

Having said that I do listen to Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4 whenever I can, even if I don't always understand what they're talking about! As well as answering questions from the audience and listeners, each week the gardening experts give their 'topical tips' on things keen and not-so-keen gardeners should be doing that week. These tips often include things like pruning and planting or even preparation for future work but one year, around this time I heard a different topical tip. The expert advised the listeners to get a chair and a drink, sit down in the garden and enjoy it! They were suggesting that it was too easy to be so engrossed in 'doing the gardening' that people forget why the garden is there in the first place- to enjoy!

Of course, this is true not just of gardening but of life in general. We can often be so busy running around doing all the things we do that we don't stop to question why we are doing them or indeed to enjoy the fruits of our labour. We find it hard to slow down, to reflect and to reconnect with the world and the people around us.

That's why rest, holidays and 'downtime' are so important, in fact they're so important that God made them part of his guidelines for life. One of the Ten Commandments instructs a Sabbath day of rest each week, and every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year where the Israelites were not to sow or prune (Leviticus 25:1-7) so presumably GQT was also off-air for a year! But God didn't just want people to rest from work, he wanted them to enjoy life. So in Deuteronomy 24:5 he says that “If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.” And in Psalm 128:2 those who love and obey God are promised that they will eat the fruit of their labour, and Jesus himself promises that those who are saved by him will have live, and have it to the full (John 10:10).

So my topical tip at this time is to look at the world and the people around you, thank God for them and make the time to enjoy them!!