In October, which is just around the corner, we hold Harvest Thanksgiving Services to remember and give thanks for the very extraordinary order, pattern, and variety of God’s created world which provides us with our daily sustenance of food and drink.

These are gifts we should never take for granted, which is why it is right to say grace before a meal.

And I hope the response to my Harvest Appeal will express our gratitude, by focussing support for those who struggle to find enough to live on each day in Angola and Myanmar.

That is not to say we do not need food banks here. Sadly, we do, but it is good to not forget the wider world context.

That focus should not, however, make us lose sight of another rather different harvest that is ready for reaping day by day all around the world.

Jesus said: the harvest is plentiful…the fields are white for harvest. He was talking about the many people who don’t believe in Him, who have yet to do what is said in the service of Baptism, to turn to Him, and who if encouraged to do so are ready to become His disciples, if presented with the Gospel.

But Jesus said the labourers are few and we should be praying for Him to send out labourers into His harvest field.

On both my cope and mitre, there is the symbol of a sheaf of wheat, to remind me, and others, of the spiritual harvest that waits to be reaped; a harvest that has eternal consequences and so has an urgency about it.

In this sense it is always harvest time and God needs labourers to bring it in…

Rt Rev. Julian Henderson

Bishop of Blackburn