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!”