Dear Friends,

At the beginning of the spring, Christine took a small pack of seeds from the front of her gardening magazine and planted them in small pots. This week there are four large tomato plants growing in the garden, laden down with fruits, all we need to do is wait for them to go red!

Harvest Festival is not just a celebration of what is "gathered in" but a thanksgiving for God’s amazing creation, which takes something so small as a seed and brings forth something as large as a marrow. Every year a miracle is enacted as nature goes through that wonderful cycle from planting to reaping. We see it in the bedding plants in the front garden, we see it in the great fields of wheat in the countryside; we see it in the conifer forests in the Lake District ñ from tiny seeds even great trees grow.

This year our Harvest celebration will be focused on small things becoming large things. Think how a grain of wheat sown in the ground grows to produce 30, 60 100-fold ears of wheat, which are cut and milled into flour, which is added to yeast and water, and baked into bread. Or how an acorn falls into the soil, sprouts and grows into a tall oak tree that, after 200 years is felled, cut and planed and made into the table where we eat our dinner. Remember the lamb born in springtime grows into the sheep on the hillsides whose fleece is sheared the next year for wool, which is combed and spun, dyed and knitted into a jumper that keeps us warm through the winter. Each of those examples has an added ingredient, human skill. It is our God-given talents that turn wheat into bread, a tree into furniture, wool into a garment.

Those green tomatoes will probably not ripen now summer is passed but they will be turned into chutney and I will enjoy them right through the winter, thanks to Christine, and God!

Lord, bless the labour we bring to serve You,

That with our neighbour we may be fed.

Sowing or tilling, we would work with You;

Harvesting, milling, for daily bread.

Albert Bayley, HP 350

Happy Harvest!