Thought for the Month

"You crown the year with Your goodness" Psalm 65.11

At this time of the year, we are especially aware of what we have grown and the fields in our country have produced. The miracle that a blackcurrant bush will produce blackcurrants that are edible, tasty and nutritious and that we get the necessary rain and warm conditions to produce that which we eat. All this produces a spirit of thankfulness for the food we eat.

In this corner of Europe we are in an area which has a plentiful supply of cheap food which means we can eat more than we need and the challenge is not to overeat. However it was not always so and there have been famines in this corner of the world.

In other parts of the world there have been famines, in Biafra in the 1970s, Ethiopia in the 1980s and North Korea in the 1990s. There is always a risk of famine somewhere in the world and the Sahel in sub‑Saharan Africa remains an area at risk. Some of these famines have been exacerbated by political issues and by the failure to get food to the needy from areas in the world where food is in plentiful supply.

So in the spiritual life there should also be a spirit of thankfulness for the loving care and goodness of our Heavenly Father who provides spiritual nourishment on a daily basis. It's an opportunity to count our blessing and 'name them one by one'. There are many blessings when we are close to the Lord. The apostle Stephen must have been thankful that the good news of salvation had been brought to his door. During his short life he must have brought forward sufficient fruit for the Lord to cut short his life after just a matter of months.

But the goodness of God extends even further from the land of Israel to every country in the world. Psalm 65 talks of abundance, fatness and joy which points to a time yet future when famines will be a thing of the past in the 'year of thy (His) goodness' when people going hungry for any reason will be a thing of the past recorded merely in history books.