Lyrics
For the gifts of heaven in the fields of earth,
My soul will sing to the Lord.
For the fruitful lands as they yield their worth,
My heart gives thanks to him.
We may plough the soil, we may plant the seed,
But God will make it grow,
And the harvest comes from the tender goodness
Of the Father’s hand.
As the trade winds blow over thirsty plains,
My soul will sing to the Lord,
And the storm clouds pour with reviving rains,
My heart gives thanks to Him.
Every season whispers the mystery,
The glorious rhythm of life,
Till the harvest comes from the boundless goodness
Of the Father’s hand.
When the crops have failed and the fields are bare,
My soul will cry to the Lord.
When the hungry know only death’s despair,
My heart will look to Him.
For the call goes out from the heart of God
To share with those in need;
As we feed the world we reflect the goodness
Of the Father’s hand.
A modern harvest anthem?
Over the years Keith and have made a conscious attempt to provide songs & hymns that serve the church calendar. Most new songs tend to be fairly generic in theme; so when a church is looking for a song about, say the Annunciation, or, as in this case, Harvest, there is precious little new material around.
This song provided a particular challenge. Harvest will immediately call to mind lines like “we plough the fields and scatter/The good seed on the ground”; although these activities obviously still happen, very few of us these days are actually involved in the process! We have become detached from, and ignorant of, the all-important process of food production, and the significance of the land, the weather, and the labour of sowing and harvesting that is involved. We simply assume that any food we desire will be there on the supermarket shelves every day of the year.
So the celebration of harvest is as important as ever – and recognizing that, even though the process of production and delivery is more & more technological, at the heart of it all is God’s provision. And we need to remember that, although the failure of a crop in the west may result in an inconvenient shortage or an irritating hike in the retail price, in many parts of the world a crop failure is literally a matter of life and death.
