By Revd Canon Chris Palmer
All good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above.
Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord
for all his love.
This weekend we celebrate Harvest Festival – more properly called Harvest Thanksgiving. The Cathedral will be filled with the most wonderful decorations from Devon Young Farmers clubs, with marrows and corn and other tokens of the fruits of the soil. And we say thank you for all those who grow and tend and deliver our food to us; and we say thank you to God for ‘all good gifts around us’, acknowledging that these are God’s provision, even though we so often take them for granted.
Such thanksgiving or gratitude is an important aspect of being human and of being Christian; it is a wonderful and important thing, from which many good things flow.
First, gratitude creates and feeds our relationships. When we say thank you, we acknowledge that we need other people – that we need God. We give up the idea that we can go it alone, that we are self-sufficient. Gratitude strengthens our friendships and deepens love. When we say thank you, we look others in the face and acknowledge that we cannot do without them. And our relationships in turn bring us joy and make us more generous, so that we share the good things we have received. And our Harvest Thanksgiving, our gratitude to God, makes us friends of God, the God who longs and hopes for us to bring our love and our hearts to him.
Then, gratitude also broadens our attentiveness. We notice, we appreciate, we celebrate the gifts we receive. We live with eyes and ears open to the good around us, drinking in the smells and tastes and sights and sounds of the world around us. It’s so easy to go through life anaesthetised to all that is good, numb to the beauty and delight of the world. And this inattention makes our life small. But Jesus says that he offers us life in all its fulness. I dare to think that means a life which dares to experience the world to the full. This includes, of course, the pain and sorrow of life; if we live without the anaesthetic, we will experience the hard things. But we will also experience all that is good. Our gratitude prompts us to live with our hearts and senses full of all that is, and to become deeply aware of the God who is the ground of all our being.
Finally, gratitude saves us from resentment, cynicism, and arrogance. If you are constantly saying thank you – and meaning it – you can’t long stay angry, or contemptuous, or big headed. These thing drive us to isolation and despair; but gratitude is the best medicine to help us swap resentment for contentment, to swap cynicism for cheerfulness, and to swap arrogance for humility. Yes, gratitude leads us to humility, a word that is so misunderstood. It doesn’t mean thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less. And importantly at harvest time, the word humility comes from the word humus, the earthy, organic goodness of the soil. To be humble is to be connected to the earth, to have your feet on the ground, which is just what God did in Jesus, who humbled himself to live a human life, who had his feet on the ground.
Saying thank you is a choice we can make every day of our lives, in relationships, interactions, and prayers. And Harvest Thanksgiving is a moment to make gratitude intentional in our worship and life together. So choose gratitude! Thanks be to God for all the good things we enjoy.