Continuing the Celebration!
From 6th – 13th October this year many people around the world will be celebrating the Jewish festival of Tabernacles, or Sukkot. They will celebrate the Harvest, and also remember God bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and through 40 years in the desert.
The biblical book of Deuteronomy contains a description of what Tabernacles should have been like back then. “Celebrate… for seven days. Be joyful… you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.”
These festivals were not just a celebration, but also an expression of gratitude to God: “celebrate the festival to the Lord your God...For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.” Tabernacles was a proper holiday, with two whole days off normal work and seven days of feasting.
Farming looks very different today. Very few of us have had to sweat long hours over crops, so we’re not as ready for (or deserving of) a rest and a party as our ancestors were at this time of year. That might be even more the case in future, as the agri-tech revolution unfolds. For example, small autonomous tractors are already becoming available that do less damage to the soil and make better use of steep or oddly shaped fields.
Many arable farms already hire contractors to do the routine work with large specialist GPS-equipped machinery. In future years those people might find themselves using very different kinds of high-tech kit, acting more as land-management advisors, helping farmers to gather data and to find ways of improving soil quality, biodiversity and the water cycle.
I’m very grateful for the food that arrives on my shelves. Instead of worrying about whether or not we earned it, our modern-day Tabernacles or Harvest celebration could include ways of encouraging those involved in agriculture and developing new agricultural technologies, as well as enjoying how we can learn about and benefit from God’s creation through Science.
So, after you celebrate Harvest at church, why not follow it up with a trip to a local farm this month? Why not learn from the ancient Israelites, and follow it up with a meal together? It stands to reason that those of us who live in countries where food is plentiful and cheap could do with being proportionately more generous in our gratitude and giving. Should we throw better parties? Probably!
This article is part of a series, written by Dr Ruth Bancewicz, who is based at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge. She writes on the positive relationship between Science and Christian faith.