Harvest Reflection #1

Picture the corn in fields, gently dancing in the balmy breeze, the bronze sun slowly spreading the last rays of the day across the rolling fields and the tractors whir that are constant in the bringing in this year’s new harvest.

This idyllic image of harvest can still be found in Britain today, but when was the last time that we considered harvest when buying food?

Here in the UK we can buy most types of food 24hrs a day, something I believe we take for granted.

For instance near to where we live in Surbiton we have 5 Indian restaurants, 2 Chinese restaurants, 2 Italian restaurants, fish and chips, burger vans, MacDonald’s, cafe’s and coffee shops of various descriptions…these are all just 5 minutes away from each other.

And yet in a report released this year by Oxfam; Kenya alone has nearly 10 million people faced with famine due to the poor rains and the escalating food prices.

We did ‘feed the world’ and ‘make poverty history’. We watched the bands, watched the presenters enjoying their free beer yet and nearly a billion are still hungry…

World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, that’s despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least the main problem is that many people in the world do not have enough land to grow, or income to purchase, sufficient food.

So should we feel guilty? We have so much and take it for granted, we know that there is enough food in the world to go around and that it is prevented by greed from doing so.

The thing is this is Gods provision for His Children, not the privileged few, not those who happen to live in the developed nations…there are currently over 820 million people undernourished or malnourished on our planet whilst the levels of obesity are rocketing in the west.

So doesn’t harvest seem even more relevant today?

Maybe the nearest we get to that idyllic image of harvest is the occasional ploughman’s lunch on a sunny Sunday afternoon out on the surrey downs.

But maybe when we are in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Somerfield’s, Asda or Waitrose lets recognise His provision for us, go and stand in the fruit and veg section, stop and give yourself a moment to take in the beautiful colours, smells, tastes, shapes and sheer variety of Gods provision of His harvest.