Forget How to Dig and You Forget How to Live

Our Harvest Festival helped us to focus on the value of soil. Good soil contains all that is needed to enable growth on an unimaginable scale. And good soil doesn’t just happen, it is the result of hard work, care and management, much of which is unseen and requires the dedication and work of growers and farmers the world over.

Whilst humanity depends on the yearly cycle of crop harvests to survive, we also need the harvest of qualities such as compassion, wisdom, right choices, understanding and justice. Without these humanity is impoverished and we will starve.

Jesus pointed to the importance of the quality of soil (the Parable of the Sower - Matthew 13:18-23) with the implied expectation that we need to participate not just in the activity of sowing the seed but work to make sure the soil is ready to bring that seed to life, and to life in all its abundance.

Harvest, therefore, calls us to be thankful for all God’s good provision and to commit again to dig over the hard ground to make it receptive to those seeds of life, hope, purpose and flourishing all humankind. As the harvest hymn reminds us, ‘We plough the fields and scatter…’

God of the harvest

heal the deep scars of this world

ravaged by human greed and carelessness.

Grant us the commitment needed 

to dig over the hard ground of human hearts 

so that the seeds of your saving love produce a harvest of life for all. Amen.