what's so amazing aBOUT HARVEST?

“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.”
[William Blake - English Poet]

Right now and into early October, it’s the season of Harvest. You might remember Harvest from your school days, getting a box together of tinned soup, fruit, veg and a loaf of bread to present at church or school to help the poor or elderly. This is great, but what’s the true origin of Harvest? Why do we bother celebrating it anyway? What has Harvest got to do with my Christian faith and what’s particularly revolutionary about a load of “fruit ‘n’ veg”?

The Jewish festival of Sukkot [still celebrated by Jews around the world today], commemorates the wilderness years after the Exodus, where the Israelites wandered around the desert, led by Moses and dwelt in temporary shelters called Sukkahs. In Leviticus 23, God introduced a load of feasts that he instructed Moses to tell the Israelites to celebrate at certain points in the year. Around early Autumn [according to our Western Calendar] the Feast of Tabernacles [also known as the Feast of Shelters] takes place, in the Jewish month of Tishri.

The Israelites knew how to celebrate but they also knew how to prepare their hearts, reflect on the year and also on God’s provision in blessing the land with crops. They knew how to repent of their sins too. You see, the Feast Of Tabernacles comes on the 5th day after the most important point in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur [The Day Of Atonement] - a day where the Israelites were commanded not to work, but to reflect on and repent of their sins and purify themselves. Yet there was another dimension to the way Israelites were to celebrate Harvest time. It was a community-focused dimension. You see God’s heart is always with the poor, and he commanded the Israelites through Moses to remember them at this point in the year:

"'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.'" [Leviticus 23: 22]

So, in being Revolutionaries of Hope, what can we learn from the Old Testament and modern-day Jewish approach to Harvest? Well, there’s a challenge at this time of year to give thanks and reflect on the blessings God has given you this year: food to eat, shelter to live in and all the other creature comforts we can so easily take for granted. Also, for us as Christians, it’s a time to prepare our hearts before God, to approach the Father in Jesus’ name in the power of the Spirit to say sorry for the things we’ve done wrong. And there’s the challenge also to remember those who have nothing in our communities.

And as we prepare our hearts, ask for forgiveness and give thanks at this time, we can look ahead to the remaining three months of Hope08 and ask God to continue the amazing work he has done in us this year, as we look ahead to 2009.