Sunday 12th October, Harvest Festival, 17th Sunday after Trinity

I take so much for granted. The light by which I see, the air I breathe, the warmth of my body, the beating of my heart. A few years ago my heart stopped working properly, and suddenly a crucial part of me, to which I had previously paid very little attention, became the focus of my every waking thought. We take so many fundamentals for granted until they aren’t there.

So too with my food. I take for granted that I don’t need to worry about what I’m going to eat, or whether there will be enough – I am mostly spoiled for choice and almost always there is more to eat than I can cope with. For most human beings for most of human history, this would be the stuff of dreams. For very many human beings even now, it still is. Such are the advantages of living in a first-world country.

But it’s deeper than just money and economics. Ultimately, eventually, everything I put into my body, everything that sustains me, comes either directly or indirectly from the earth. And although human beings may have cultivated it, nurtured it, harvested it, transported it, prepared it, cooked it and delivered it to me, at the end of the day no human being has created anything that I eat. And this reminds me that ultimately, all the food that keeps me alive from day to day is a gift from God, as is the air, and the light, and – yes – the very beating of my heart.

Every blessing,

Roger.