This year – as most years in recent times at HPC – we will be supporting The Welcome Centre with our Harvest Festival donations.

Harvest Festival has always been a time to celebrate those who grow and produce our food – to reflect that the food we have is the produce of God’s creation, God’s providing for us to share with one another. It’s a wonderful symbol of our co-operation as stewards of God’s creation too.

It is a time to be grateful to God for all we have, for the harvest of the land but also for the harvest of our own labour, whatever that may be. What has your hard work in a shop, in a hospital, in an office or from your computer at home produced this year? How have the skills and gifts God gave you helped you to provide good things for yourself and others? This is part of our celebration too.

The bringing of home grown food to eat together at a Harvest Supper, and sharing that abundance of food with those in our community who have less to eat, has evolved in the last 15 years by sad necessity into collecting for local foodbanks.

The call to feed the hungry can be found throughout the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. As we celebrate the Harvest it makes sense to focus our Harvest giving, and our celebration of gratitude to God in a way that helps others to eat.

You are very welcome to bring donations for The Welcome Centre to our Harvest services on October 2nd. We also collect donations on other Sundays as part of our regular giving.