One of the first things we’re taught as children is the importance of saying ‘thank you’. And we quickly learn that we’re expected to say ‘thank you’ even when we don’t really mean it!
This Harvest we’ll sing and pray words of thanksgiving. When we thank God for our food and for the gifts of creation, are we just doing what’s expected of us? What kind of thanks does God want from us?
This Harvest, join us in supporting communities facing hunger and the impacts of the climate crisis. Discover ways you can take action through our 2026 Harvest Appeal.
No thanks necessary?
In Luke chapter 12, Jesus tells a parable of a rich man whose land produces a good harvest. The man tears down his existing barns and builds larger ones to store all this plenty. He’s delighted that he has ‘ample goods laid up for many years’. But God tells him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.’
In our world today we admire people who are ‘self-made’. The rich man might well have described himself in that way. He has secured his own future. Of course, it’s unlikely he’s been labouring in the fields or building barns with his own hands but that doesn’t matter to him. The land is his, the crops are his, the barns are his, and so a future of prosperity and comfort is his also.
The rich man acts like he has no one to thank. He doesn’t recognise our dependence on one another and on God.
If we only have ourselves to rely on, then we must hold on tight to everything that’s ours, building bigger barns to protect us in the years to come. Self-reliance can make us focus on what we want in competition with what others want and need. But if we accept that we’re dependent on our neighbours and fundamentally on God, our Creator, we’re free to live more generously and co-operatively. We can be grateful for what we have without taking more than we need.
We can be grateful for what we have without taking more than we need.
Rich toward God
Jesus ends the parable by saying that the man stored up treasure for himself but failed in being ‘rich toward God’. This might seem strange. What could God need from us? God lacks nothing.
Jesus talks about God’s abundant generosity towards us and God’s desire that we respond. We’re ‘rich toward God’ when we seek God’s Kingdom (Luke 12:31). The Kingdom is God’s gift to us, a treasure without price, and its richness is ours to share. We’re ‘rich toward God’ by living out the ways of the Kingdom that God has given us.
Gratitude as a practice
How will we practise these ways of the Kingdom this Harvest? How will we make our ‘thank you’ more than a polite gesture?
We can learn more about how our food is grown, where it comes from, and what hidden costs for God’s creation are involved in keeping us fed. We can turn our thanksgiving into action by fundraising for those experiencing food insecurity and those affected by the climate crisis. And we can challenge ourselves to recognise that we’re dependent on God and on each other. Being grateful is a practice. We need to keep working at it.
Being grateful is a practice. We need to keep working at it.
Give me a grateful heart
George Herbert, a Christian poet who lived in the seventeenth-century, wrote about our need for God’s help with all things, including with the practice of being grateful. ‘Thou that hast giv’n so much to me,’ Herbert wrote, ‘Give one thing more, a gratefull heart’. Even gratitude itself is something we can’t produce on our own. We need to ask God for help. If we do, Herbert writes, perhaps we can exchange our occasional and imperfect thankfulness for ‘a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise’.
Gratitude isn't just saying ‘thank you’. It's a practice that connects us to God, to creation, and to our global community. Thankfulness grounded in an understanding of our dependence shapes how we receive, how we give, and how we live.
