As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease (Gen. 8:22).
Harvest thanksgiving is a religious festival with social dimension celebrated among Christians, the traditional religionists, and the people of other oriental religions of the world. For instance, the history of Ancient Near East as a community of faith and the entire Christendom is incomplete without recalling such spiritual and symbolic event like harvest.
Harvest, in ordinary sense, is an agricultural term which means gathering and reaping of mature crops from the field. However, it has a generic value in the sense of its various applications to the religious community and to the ordinary man.
To the ordinary man, it is used to refer to the autumn season in which crops of different kinds are harvested, thereby ushering in a boom and abundance of food crops for the consumption of both humans and livestock. It equally marks the end of the growing cycle for a particular crop, and this is the focus of seasonal celebrations by many religions.
Among the Christians of old, religious festivals associated with harvest are: the Feast of Weeks or the Harvest of First Fruits, which is normally wheat, the Feast of Tabernacle or Ingathering of Grapes.
Here the primary crops harvested include grain, grapes and olives. Feast of Tabernacle equally meant Pentecost, which was usually celebrated seven complete weeks or 50 days of Passover. It was essentially harvest celebration to mark the newness of life in God. This experience also translates into new realm of moral conducts and spiritual response to the Creator by all who share in the encounter. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples of Jesus when the people from different countries were in Jerusalem to celebrate harvest.
Judging from Biblical perspective, harvest is a phenomenon verily expedient and consistently certain as far as earth endures. “Seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, …will not cease” (Gen. 8:22). This simply means that while other seasons abound, planting and cultivation must precede harvest. It also establishes the fact that harvest is contingent upon seedtime.
Imperatively, sowing of seed characterised by diligence and hard work is the soul of harvest, while wealth and prosperity to the society are its end-products. In other words, work comes before pleasure.
The value, therefore, that underlies the season of harvest and its celebration are thanksgiving to God for His protection and provision, healing and restoration etc, which are made available due to the abundant turn out of herbs potent for natural healing, thus bringing comfort and rejuvenation of souls and repentance as a mark of gratitude to God. Consequently, many Christians and other religious faithful turn out in their numbers to acknowledge the benevolence of God to humanity by giving special offering to God. Giving to God is also influenced by this abundance through God.
In the religious parlance, the significance of harvest focuses more on the futuristic event of ingathering of souls of the righteous for eternal preservation in His Kingdom, while the unrighteous shall be reaped as chaff for the burning hell.
Brethren, as Christians celebrate harvest within the season, times of hard work and honest labour should be encouraged. This is because it is the hardworking farmer who ought to be the first to get the share of the crops.
Imperatively, laziness and idleness are discouraged because they negate the concept of harvest. By hard work, such moral vices like criminality and corruption are minimised.
Therefore, as we assimilate the social, economic and spiritual significance of harvest, such virtues like hard work and resourcefulness, a heart of gratitude to God, and repentance from sinful vices, giving to the less-privileged, supporting projects that promote human course, resignation from laziness, and rejuvenate attitude towards positive values.
Above all, the fear of God, who is the source of all providence, should preoccupy our hearts. This way, the Lord blesses us more abundantly.