Growing

With all the Harvest events in Bures this week (the school visiting the church to present their gifts, the Harvest supper, Harvest lunch for the elderly [which Chris and I get to go to – yum!], and the Harvest Festival on Sunday), it makes me wonder what there is for us to learn from harvest.

Like Christmas, it is a good time to remember all the blessings we have, and to seek to bless others - particularly those who need food. But harvest is specifically about the end of a growing process – and I think it can teach us a lesson about appreciating growth.

In anybody’s life, the end of a growing process is worth celebrating. God often allows us to go through challenging times because they are part of a growing process and getting to the end of that process is often a real achievement. I wonder how many people are in the midst of a ‘growing process’ right now. It could be trying to get to the end of a course, or an illness, persisting through a period of grief or unemployment or stress at work. I expect in one way or another most of us are in the middle of some sort of process we are working through. If you feel you are coming to the end of one, well done! Don’t forget to celebrate what you’ve achieved and learnt through that time of growth. You might also want to thank God for standing by you in it.

In the farming world, the whole point of the growing process is the fruit that is harvested in the end. What fruit has been developed in you by the growing process you’ve been going through? What is developing in you now? Perhaps it’s one of the fruits of the spirit, “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). If the process is developing any of those in you, it is helping you to become more like Jesus! And if that is the case, both for you and the people around you, it is growth worth having and will yield a harvest worth celebrating.