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.

Eisriesenwelt (Ice Caves)

On any vacation there are things you are never likely to forget.  When you pay out the money you anticipate (perhaps over optimistically) that the thing(s) you will never forget will be good.  The reality of vacations: long distance travel, unfamiliar food, different climates, different insect life etc. suggest that this optimism needs qualifying.

 

One thing I will never forget from this vacation was an announcement.

 

It is probably true that there have been several Church Services in which an announcement has stolen the show, notwithstanding the preparatory efforts of the musicians, the preacher and other participants.  That day the announcement somewhat stole the show.  The Eisreisenwelt are lauded as one of Austria's most spectacular places.  That is quite something in an alpine nation that is filled with amazing landscapes and an enormous historical significance over many centuries of culture, politics and the arts.

 

Certainly these ice caves are amazing - though possibly less so than the hype and world recognition suggest.  A cave is, after all, a cave.  And every cave I have ever visited has shapes and clever lighting shows them up.  Whatever.

 

The announcement that my daughter and I will not forget was memorable for its context as well as its content.

The caves are high, high up the mountain.  There was a bus to start with which (together with its amazingly grumpy driver - isn't it strange how you can tell that someone is grumpy and swearing at every passing car even when you can't speak his language?) took us to the car park.  The car park is itself a steep slope, then a facility building, and another uphill walk of some minutes to the cable car.

 

I mentally associate cable cars with going up mountains from bottom to top but this one turned out to go up from about 6/10ths of the way up to 7/10ths.  It left us with a further climb, the following photo being taken about a third of the way up that last climb.  You can see the entrance to the cave in the middle.

 



 

Even at the cave entrance the temperature, on the day we climbed, was in the mid 20s.  The English language has several words available for how we felt on getting to the entrance (how everyone arriving at the entrance seemed to feel).  I'll choose this one: knackered.

 

That was the context of the announcement. 

 

The content of the announcement?  At the entrance tired climbers were offered a Deutsch or Englisch queue each with fit-looking young guides in very warm-looking coats.  And ours, in decent English, made this announcement;

 

"I have good news and bad news.  The bad news is that there are 700 steps up and 700 steps down.  The good news is that although it is freezing you will not feel cold with all those steps to climb!"  On the cheerful delivery of which he led us to light our lamps and on into the caves.

 

My inadequacy of language means I cannot accurately convey the experience of arriving with exhausted relief at a destination to find that the destination is a 1400 step climb.  The best I can do is that it felt like my body remained at several thousand feet up but my heart sank back to the shuttle bus stop at the valley bottom.

 

I wonder how many people climb their way through life without realising what they are climbing towards.  I wonder whether they would so climb if they knew.  I wonder if there is a whole different Way that ends with rest?