Turning Cartwheels

Harvest time is always a difficult one for the preacher.  First of all, it’s not a Christian festival, so there is no obvious Bible story on which to focus our attention.  Then, the ‘traditional’ harvest scene is no longer an integral part in the lives of most of us, as once was the case.  So there is a dilemma: to attempt to re-create something now consigned to history; to introduce a ‘missionary’ element, and focus on the needs of the third world; or to re-define ‘harvest’ in broader terms of God’s bounty which now comes to us in tins and packets from the supermarket shelves.

If you read my last blog, when I recalled accompanying my mum to the cornfield to take my father his tea, you won't be surprised to learn that for me this time always conjours up pictures which wouldn’t be out of place illustrating a Thomas Hardy novel: giving thanks for the corn safely stored in the barn and the straw tidily thatched in the stackyard “’ere the winter storms begin”.

But let me draw you to one fine detail from that idyll of harvest past.  The corn would be conveyed from field to farm on a horse-drawn cart, running on two or four wooden wheels.  In the centre of the wheel is the hub, and radiating from it are spokes, joined together at their ends by a rim of wood, made in four or more pieces, and held in place by an iron tyre. 

I was reminded of the skill of the wheelwright recently when I visited a farm museum near Cambridge.  In a way our lives resemble those spoked wheels, each spoke representing a separate interest or sector of life: work, the bowls club, the church, our family, neighbours along the street, regular social contacts, the pub, and so on.  If you see a cartwheel laying on the ground, you will find that it isn’t actually flat.  The hub is some distance off the ground, supported by the spokes.  The wheel is designed that way so that it can better resist the forces associated with the moving waggon.

Each of those different sectors is an important part of our life.  Together they support us, just as the spokes of the wheel support the hub, and if a spoke is broken, if we have bad feeling with someone or some group, our life - the wheel - is the poorer.  It is easy to focus our attention on ourselves, to see ourselves as the all-important hub of a wheel.  But just turn the illustration upside down for a moment (Jesus often did this in his teaching, didn’t He?).  If the family, the neighbours and all the rest are the spokes of our wheel, doesn’t that mean that each of us is also a spoke of someone else’s wheel?  Doesn’t that place a responsibility on us: a giving, as well as a receiving rôle?

As we sing those familiar hymns once again this year, ask yourself, “whose harvest should I be helping to bring home?”