I had an interesting chat with a local Anglican vicar the other day. He is a good friend and I have great respect for him and all he does with young people. However, he said that he felt harvest was an irrelevance and that Remembrance Sunday had lost meaning for today's society. Both of these events he felt should be dropped from the church calendar.
Yet I can't help but feel we would miss out on an awful lot if we scrapped harvest. Although in many parts of our country we have lost that link with agriculture and rural life, we all depend on it day by day for the food that sustains us. Harvest is a time to stop and be thankful for the many people in our country who work long hours, often for little pay, to provide food for us to eat. Harvest is also a time to think of trade justice. It is a time to support movements like Fairtrade that ensure that all producers of food and clothes receive a fair wage for the work that they do. While we must always support our local farmers and producers, if it wasn't for producers in far off lands we would not have the coffee, tea, spices, chocolate, cotton and many other products that we enjoy in our life.
We must never forget the harvest and harvesters. We must never cease to pray for them and their produce. We must never stop educating our young people about where their food comes from. And we must never stop thanking God for all that he blesses us with, while at the same time remembering all those who will be going hungry this harvest.
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