Festivals - Harvest
Fiona has created a Powerpoint with some harvest photos that she has taken. Use them as worksheets, for discussion, in services, as an on-screen powerpoint and more! We hope they will be a useful tool for you to talk and think about Harvest with young people. Click on the image to view or download the file.
The Bible says:
Be thankful
"Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. Then God, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel." Philippians 4: 6-7.
Be generous
"When you harvest your grain, always leave some of it standing along the edges of your fields and don’t pick up what falls on the ground. Don’t strip your grapevines clean or gather the grapes that fall off the vines. Leave them for the poor and for those foreigners who live among you. I am the Lord your God." Leviticus 19:9-10.
It Offers a promise
"As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat; winter and summer, day and night." Genesis 8:22.
Psalm 65
O God, it is right for us to praise you,
and keep our promises to you,
because you answer our prayers:
You care for the land and water it:
you make it rich and fertile.
You fill the running streams with water:
and irrigate the land.
You soften the ground with showers:
and make young crops grow.
You crown the year with goodness:
and give us a plentiful harvest.
The pastures are filled with flocks:
the hillsides are full of joy.
The fields are covered with grain
and they shout for joy and sing.
For a PDF of these readings click on the image or title above.
Dear God, who is here on earth, as well as in heaven.
We thank you that when we woke up this morning, we were able to have breakfast.
We pray for children who didn’t have any breakfast this morning, and who will only eat once today.
We thank you that you ask us to be part of the answer and that we can bring help to difficult situations.
Please use our prayers and our actions to bring hope to struggling people.
Amen.
Lord of the Harvest, we thank you for all the blessings of our lives.
We thank you that we have delicious food to eat and clean water to drink.
We thank you that when we sleep tonight, we will be in a comfy bed in a warm home.
We thank you for all the things we enjoy doing and for the things that make us smile.
This day we give you grateful thanks.
Amen.
For a PDF of these readings click on the image or title above.
Every day of the year, a crop is gathered somewhere in the world.
For hundreds of years, people all over the world have held harvest festivals to celebrate a good harvest.
All harvest festivals are times of thankfulness and offer a time to think about the blessings in our lives.
The season of harvest is also a time for us to think about how we can be generous to others.
And it is a time to consider how we look after our world.
Reader A: Saint Paul wrote
Reader B: in Thessalonians 5
Reader A: verse 5
Reader B: “Be good to each other
Reader A: and to everyone else
Reader B: always be joyful
Reader A: and never stop praying
Reader B: and whatever happens
Readers A & B: keep thanking God!
Cabbages, cauliflowers,
crisp, crunchy Swedes,
peppers and parsnips
and melons with seeds;
Onions and mushrooms,
potatoes, fish and chips,
tomatoes, bananas
and apples with pips.
Stick beans and broad beans
and beans in a tin,
blackcurrants so juicy
they run down your chin;
Cornflakes for breakfast
And mangoes for tea-
Come to our harvest
And give thanks with me!
Acrostic Poem
H is for the Harvest.
Farmers work hard, hour by hour,
to cut and store the golden grain that's then made into flour.
A is for apples, pears and plums,
all hanging from the tree.
They're fresh and sweet and juicy - a treat for you and me.
R is for red and yellow, orange, gold and green,
the trees so full of colour as nature paints the scene.
V is for vegetables, gathered and safely stored away.
Potatoes, carrots, sprouts and peas, so there's some for every day.
E is for the earth, providing all our food,
with sun and rain to make things grow to give us all that's good.
S is for seeds, so gently twirling to the ground,
settling deep within the soil where new growth will be found.
T - So it's a big Thank You we must not forget to say
To God above who shows his love in caring day by day.
What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong
A: I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
B: I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
A: The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you.
B: I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.
For a PDF of these readings click on the image or title above.
795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth.
One out of six children - roughly 100 million - in developing countries is underweight.
66 million primary school-age children attend classes hungry across the developing world, with 23 million in Africa alone.
Last year Fiona wrote an assembly about the environment, COP26 and climate change which can be used as an assembly. View or download it here. Although COP26 isn't as timely this year as it was last year, we hope you can adapt the resource to fit a general environment/climate change themed harvest assembly.
