A letter from the Vicarage – Rev’d Andy Stand

Hi Everyone,

How are we all doing?

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation:
through your goodness we have this bread
to set before you,
which earth has given and human hands have made.
It will become for us the bread of life.

Blessed be God for ever.

Words from our communion service, which we say at the offertory, when we bring our gifts to God’s table – gifts both of money, and of bread and wine, to be shared amongst us all. This is a prayer of both praise: “Blessed are you Lord God …” and of thanksgiving “… through your goodness we have this bread …”.

This month we celebrate our service of Harvest praise and Thanksgiving. How thankful are we? Much of what we have and are given, we take for granted.

We moan about our climate and our weather. There is a shop in Keswick, in the Lake District, that proclaims from it’s windows that “there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing.” That may be true, when it comes to being outdoors in our work or leisure time, but the right kind of clothing, is not going to afford the farmer the protection they want for their crops. It’s not going to help, the abundance or otherwise of the harvest.

I have lost track a bit at the moment, as to how good or otherwise our harvest is expected to be this year. I know that it is early because of the hot weather; but at the beginning of the spring, following the rain and the flooding there was probably a degree of concern about whether it was going to be possible to plant the seeds in good time for them to grow and be harvested. Maybe there was a feeling that there was no point in actually sowing the seeds.

Those feelings seem to have been replaced by relief that the warmer weather when it arrived did so for a longer period than we have been used to in recent years, and may therefore result in a better harvest than was at first feared. Or it may be that, that wet and cold start and hot summer has meant a good harvest for certain crops and a poorer harvest for others less suited to those conditions.

Nonetheless, let us thank and praise God for His bountiful goodness. Let us praise and thank God, for the industry of our food producers and suppliers.

But what of our own harvests? The fruit of each of our labours?

I occasionally use a form of prayer, just before lunch, which asks God to “prosper thou, the work of my hands”. With it I can entrust into God’s hands the meetings, the conversations and the ministry that I have sought to give and receive that morning. I will have spoken words, but can never be sure whether they have been heard as I meant them to be. More importantly, I cannot be sure that they have been said and heard in the manner that God meant them to be. All I can do is place them into God’s hands and ask that he “proposer them”. Equally, by that same prayer, I invite God to be part of the ministry that I will seek to give and receive for the rest of that day.

Can I judge the success or failure of that work? Not easily. But I can give thanks to God, for past blessings and in faith trust to Him to prosper the work of my hands.

What will your prayer be this harvest time?

Every blessing,

Andy.