Harvest

Of all the special days, even including Christmas an Easter, there are none that have more messages for the soul than harvest thanksgiving. This is what Victorian preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said of it - and he was in the middle of the world's largest city at the time;

'If you have an opportunity to journey into the country during the next three weeks, you will, if your heart is rightly attuned, find a marvellous mass of wisdom couched in a cornfield. Why I could not attempt for a moment to open the mighty mines of gabled treasure which are hidden there.

Think, beloved, of the joy of harvest. How does it tell us of the joy of the redeemed if we, being saved, shall at last be carried like shocks of corn fully ripe into the garner!

Look at the ear of corn when it is fully ripe, and see how it bends toward the earth! It held its head erect before, but in getting ripe how humble does it become! And how does God speak to the sinner and tell him, that if he would be fit for the great harvest he must drop his head and cry, "Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner."

And when we see the weeds spring up amongst wheat, do we not recall our Master's parable over again of the tares among the wheat; and are we not reminded of the great day of division, when he shall say to the reaper, "Gather first the tares and bind them in bundles, to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn."

O yellow field of corn, you preach well to me, the minister, "Behold, the fields are ripe already to the harvest." Work yourself; and pray you the Lord of the harvest to send forth more labourers into the harvest."

And it preaches well to you, O man of years, for it tells you that the sickle of death is sharp, and that you must soon fall. But it cheers and comforts you, for it tells that the wheat shall be safely housed, and it bids thee hope that you will be carried to your Master's garner to be his joy and his delight for ever. Hark, then, to the rustling eloquence of the yellow harvest.'

Joy

Today our Church is rockin' to the sounds of a Caribbean funeral.   If you've never heard Tony Campolo's well-travelled story about a similar experience to this then it is here (and even if you have heard it you'll like hearing it again) . . .

 

Hang in there and you'll hear this:  When you were born you cried and everyone else was happy.  That's not important.  What's important is that when you die, even though everyone else is crying, you're happy.

International

Someone visiting our Church the other week remarked, "It's very international, isn't it?"  Whilst technology changes at breath-taking speed, the make up of Wycombe has been changing just as fast.  And because the British have lost their love for God the Church is changing more rapidly even than the High Street.  Scarcely a week goes by when I am not writing a Welcome Letter to someone with a name that certainly doesn't owe its origin to the Anglo-Saxons.

 

It struck me forcibly a few weeks ago when we went to lunch with some people from the Church.  Our family was born in England; one was from Africa, one from North America, two from Central America, one from Oceania.

 

In fact it struck me that the mix of people in our Church is more international than in the International Church we visited on vacation.

 

On September 11 it is good to realise that although the world is full of differences it is also full of people with shared lives, including those whose destiny lies beyond nationality in a Heavenly City with gates in every direction.