Harvest Thankfulness

“Having received the gift of daily bread from your gentle hand, O Lord and heavenly Father, and been satisfied with it – this gift which you give to us in such abundance, just as you do all your other gifts – we ask you through Christ, your Son, to make the power of the Holy Spirit complete in us. We desire to love you with our whole hearts and bless you with our mouths so that we who receive your gifts do not become proud and arrogant, nor forget your love and sacred commandments. We desire to love you with our whole hearts, not just with our mouths and lips but with our works and deeds and all that is in us. We thank you; we honour, praise, and bless you as our Creator and Sustainer, not just in this life but also in the life everlasting. Amen.”

Last weekend I visited my Dad’s church, where they were celebrating Harvest Festival. Successful harvests have been celebrated for hundreds of years by decorating churches with gifts of food which are then given to people in need. I once attended a wedding which took place during the Harvest Festival weekend. The church windowsills were decorated with onions and potatoes and there were stooks of wheat at the doorway. Unusual decorations for a wedding, but striking and memorable!

On Sunday the church held a lunch after the Festival service, to raise money for the charities Compassion and Operation Agri. Perhaps the way we bring our food offerings to church for Harvest Festival has changed over the years: we see more packets and cans and less bread and home made goods, but it is right that we are still reminded to provide for those in need, and that this is still a fundamental part of our harvest thanksgivings. The Amish have been praying for many years: “We desire to love you … with our works and deeds and all that is in us.” A reminder of the importance of living an active faith.

Journeying Through Loss

“People around us don’t understand grief unless they’ve been through it themselves.”
H. Norman Wright

Kirk Neely’s son Erik died suddenly. On a Tuesday evening he spoke to his son on the phone. Early the following morning his daughter in law called to tell them Erik was on the way to hospital, and asking Kirk and his wife to get there as quickly as they could. Halfway there, they received the call every parent dreads. In his book When Grief Comes Kirk wrote “I had been through valleys of grief before, but this one was deeper, longer, and darker than any other.”

Grief is often referred to as a season, and it seems as though this season has come around again, sliding in alongside autumn and being somehow emphasised by the golden colours of the dying leaves, and the promise of austere weather and short cold days ahead.

Perhaps, since I walked my own valley a few years ago, I am more aware of the grief of others than I would have been before. I think H Norman Wright’s comment is true. When we’ve grieved deeply, we understand better the pain that others are going through.

This time, the grieving is not mine personally, but the loss and pain affecting close friends. One recently lost her father, less than a year after losing her closest friend. Another has lost, only last week, her dearest friend of many years. Maybe it’s my friends’ loss which makes me feel so sad for Emma Egging, the brave and proud wife of Flt Lt Jon Egging who died just last month when his Red Arrow Hawk aircraft crashed. Seeing her speak of her husband on TV on Sunday at the Great North Run, and watching the Red Arrows fly their own tribute overhead brought a lump to my throat.

Grief is a strange thing. It is not linear, and doesn’t follow a prescribed pattern. The ‘big things’ can be faced and got through. The small things trip you up, sometimes months or years later. We know these things, but we don’t really understand them until we’ve been there. And when we find our friends there, the challenge is how to support and care for them while they walk through their own dark valleys.

I chat to my bereaved friends, but I also like to send them things. Perhaps something small which I know they will like, and often a book. Kirk Neely’s book is not the latest book out, but it is a very personal walk through the grieving process. It’s written in a way which makes reading it easy. Like grief itself this is not a linear book. You don’t have to start at the beginning and work to the end. You can dip in and out. Kirk says he tried to write it “remembering how difficult it is to read when your heart is broken and your eyes are blurred with tears”. It is a book of comfort, of encouragement, and of hope. In short, highly recommended.

Bill Coleman and a Quilt

Pray for a good harvest but continue to hoe.
Amish Proverb

Bill Coleman ran his own photography studio for thirty years, before a friend took him to visit a remote Amish village.

That journey changed his life.

At the age of fifty, he closed his studio and began photographing the Amish. Now eighty-five, he continues to photograph the same village as often as he can. His work is acclaimed and exhibited around the world. Yet his interaction with the Amish people and their values and ways has altered his own values in ways he believes are for the better.

You can read his story in Amish Values for Your Family: What We Can Learn from the Simple Life. And yes, an Amish quilt does get a mention!

In this engaging book you can learn from the Amish about prioritising what is truly important, simplifying decision making, safeguarding time together, letting go and slowing down.

You can read a sample chapter here.

By the way, if you enjoy Christmas novellas, as I do, you are likely to spot a link between this story and the forthcoming A Lancaster County Christmas, due for UK release in October.

A review of this is coming soon, but if you would like a sneaky peek, click on the link for a sample chapter. The sample chapter doesn't give away the connection, so you'll have to read the whole book to find out what it is!


If you'd like to see some of Bill Coleman's photos (they're well worth a look), you can find them here.

Amish Values for Your Family
Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9780800719968
Published by: Revell (Distributed by Lion Hudson)
Available through any good bookshop or online

Coming Soon from Baker Books!

What if preaching isn't just one part of worship? What if preaching is worship?

Michael Quicke explores the role of preaching in the church in his new book Preaching as Worship.

At the start of the book Michael says "in recent years, I have been propelled into a fresh understanding of how worship includes everything. Whenever definitions of worship limit and shrink it down to small scale stuff, great damage is done to God's cosmic purposes. We need to see not only how preaching belongs within worship but also how the whole of church life and mission is part of worship too. My convictions about worship have grown in dimension so much that they have radically deepened my life and ministry and reordered its goal. That's why I hope you will take the time to read this book."

Even though this book was written in the US much of it came out of Michael’s UK background and experience. Michael says “I really do see it as the outcome of my own journey with preaching and worship which all began in England, and some of my illustrations come straight out of the UK.”

Sample chapter.

Preaching as Worship is out in the UK in October.


Bringing the Bible to Life.

The Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook is colourful, informative and easy to read and use. It is a big book - over 1100 pages long, and is full of photos, illustrations, maps and charts as well as articles by leading scholars. Split into three sections, it covers:

God's Story (and Your Story), which includes sections on how the Bible is organized, and the history between the Old and New Testaments.

The Spirit and the Scribes (How the Bible Came to Be), which includes sections on the production and shaping of the Old Testament Canon, the Dead Sea scrolls, and Bible translations.

Digging Deeper into the Bible, which considers elements usch as how to read, interpret, and apply the Bible; Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament and responding to contemporary challenges to the Gospels.

There is a vast amount more than just those sections outlined above!







The Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook is published in the UK in October.