Tag: harvest

Praise God for harvest time

the maize harvest near Bletchingley, Surrey
October 2012. (c) Stephen Craven

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is another in the Harvest series: “Praise God for harvest-time” by Paul Wigmore.  As John pointed out when playing it for morning prayer, six verses all with choruses makes for a long hymn, so since the chorus has the same metric pattern as the verse, he chose to make it four 8-line verses (the second half of the first and last being the ‘chorus’ with alleluias).

Unlike the last two ‘harvest’ hymns, this focusses very much on God’s provision of food for humankind, an idea that dates back to the creation myths of Genesis, when our ancestors were promised food from all kinds of plants. Not, at that stage, animals: meat-eating is a sign of the Fall, although I haven’t yet heard any vegans actually making that argument.  There is no reference in this hymn to meat, either, although in writing “fruit of earth and ocean’s yield” the composer probably had fish, rather than sea-weed, in mind.

There is no date given for publication of the hymn; Paul Wigmore was born in 1925 so it would presumably have been written any time after the Second World War. Why I make this point is that like many traditional harvest hymns, the imagery is of God “joining with our human hand” and the smallholder farmer ploughing the land (although the “plough turning soil and stone” could be equally horse- or tractor-drawn). But the vast majority of humans today eat supermarket food, plants grown or animals reared commercially on an extensive scale.  There are many ethical questions around food supply today, from genetic modification, through battery farming of fish and chicken, to fairtrade certified co-operatives versus cheap mass production by workers on minimum wage (or worse). None of these have easy solutions with over seven billion mouths to feed. The effects of climate change on traditional growing and harvesting seasons, and the rapid decline in pollinators, are other problems to be addressed urgently.

But back to the hymn, and with those questions in the background we can still praise God that (for the time being) the sun and rain continue to ripen the crops, and promise (verse 5) to share the benefits we receive with those who have less.

For the fruits of all creation

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is another harvest themed one, “For the fruits of all creation” by Fred Pratt Green.  It’s another one I have known for many years, and the original words, I’m sure were “For the fruits of his creation”. The change is presumably to avoid gendered pronouns for God, always a debatable point since doing so detracts from the idea that God is a personality and not a mere force.

The thanks we give, then, are firstly for the fruit of the earth itself, and for the human labour involved at all stages of food production (for without farmers and factory workers we would mostly be starving).  In the second verse the emphasis shifts from food to “the help we give our neighbour”, with ‘neighbour’ being defined in a global sense.  In caring and sharing with our global neighbours, “God’s will is done”.  Most churches have for many years now celebrated harvest by asking for gifts of food or money for the relief of poverty at a local or international level, with the idea that all God’s blessings are intended to be shared and not used selfishly.

The third verse asks us to thank God for a wider range of blessings: the “harvests of the Spirit” (presumably what is usually called the “fruits of the Spirit”), the “good we all inherit” (not sure what that means!), and for the wonders of the world, for truth and the love of God himself.

John played this to the tune that I think is called ‘ar hyd y nos’, but I do like the one set here in the book by Francis Jackson, best known as the long-time organist of York Minster.

Fill your hearts with joy and gladness

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Fill your hearts with joy and gladness” by Timothy Dudley-Smith.  This is put in the ‘harvest thanksgiving’ section of the hymn book, so I thought the start of September, the ‘Creation season’ in the Church, would be a suitable time for it.

The hymn as a whole is based on Psalm 147 which in the NRSV Bible is subtitled “Praise for God’s care for Jerusalem”.  It’s really only the third verse that is about harvest and all that’s needed for a successful one: “Praise the Lord for times and seasons, cloud and sunshine, wind and rain … grass upon the mountain pastures, golden valleys thick with grain”.  The first verse does also have a creation aspect as it praises God as creator of the “starry heavens”.

The second verse is more about the fact that this creator God has a relationship with people. “Wounded souls his comfort know; those who fear him find his mercies, peace for pain and joy for woe; humble hearts are high exalted, human pride and power laid low”. The last verse reminds us that peace and prosperity are dependent upon society following God’s laws and walking in his ways. In fact this psalm, and much of the Bible, is addressed to all God’s people rather than to the individual. The modern ‘Western’ reading of the Bible as an instruction manual for individuals misses much of the point that it requires the whole of a society to buy in to a religious or political philosophy of the common good, for it to flourish.  The ‘prosperity gospel’ (believe in Christ and follow his teaching, and you’ll become wealthy) makes sense at a societal level, and if wealth is understood in a much wider sense than mere monetary value, but not at the level of the individual.