Our church congregation is made up of many people from many walks of life, but
none of us are farmers! We still, however, have a harvest celebration at HCF. This
year we marked the occasion on 2 nd October 2022. Why did we do this?
Traditionally, harvest is an annual celebration of food grown on the land from the
crops which have been safely harvested. From a Christian perspective, Christians all
over the world thank God for His provision of food and remind themselves that God
made the world and everything in it. The harvest festival in churches began in 1843
when Reverend Robert Hawker introduced a harvest festival to his Morwenstow
Church in Cornwall, a thanksgiving service to which people brought fruits and
vegetables they had grown and distributed to the parish poor.
However, do we see harvest in the Bible? Yes, we do. There are two feasts
mentioned in the Bible which are linked to harvest – Shavout which is linked to the
first fruits of harvest and Sukkot which marks the end of the harvest. Further, Exodus
23 v 16 says: “You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when
you gather in from the field the fruit of your labour’”
So, what did we do at HCF? We decorated a table at the front of the church and
those of us who attend HCF regularly brought donations for the local food bank. We
thanked God for His provision for us and prayed for those who will receive the food
donations.
By Sisir Kanjilal
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