Gathering In 

It’s September! The schools go back after a long summer break and suddenly the season changes…it’s autumn and it’s harvest.

I wonder what harvest means to you. I still remember being envious of school friends whose parents had covered bigger boxes with foil and filled them with more stuff than mine, for our harvest assembly. I was even more envious of those who had little baskets (but now realise they’re what shops sell mushrooms in!) When I was at school, harvest was all about the fruit, veg and ‘we plough the fields…’ Maybe, because I was a child, I didn’t question it but today this feels far removed from reality; most of us don’t live in sight of fields and our shopping usually comes from supermarkets…or perhaps even delivered to our door.

Harvest is about thankfulness, recognising where things come from with gratitude; and, ‘gathering in.’ It harks back to the time when produce was seasonal, and so was gathered in at the end of the summer to last through the winter, until the next growing season.
I’ve been pondering ‘gathering in’ recently. Now that we can have strawberries at any time of year, I wonder if we’ve lost the sense of ‘gathering in’ produce. So what do we ‘gather in’ instead?
My mind turns to busyness, appointments in the diary that seem to stretch far into the future, or activities for children that will be good for them! In our house we ‘gather in’ no end of chargers and cables for the multitude of electronic devices we have (but we can never find the right one when we need it!) and as I write this, my family seems to have ‘gathered in’ a vast quantity of Pringles tubes of various flavours which have appeared in my cupboard from the recesses of children’s end of term bags and activities.

What do you gather in? I wonder what God wants us to gather in, or harvest. I don’t think it’s Pringles or device cables! I think it’s about connection. God longs to gather us in as his children, and wants us to know who and whose we are; dearly loved children of a heavenly father. Perhaps God wants us to gather in faith, storing it up as an anchor for hard times. A faith that’s fuelled by prayer and dwelling in his word. A faith that can look forward with hope, just as a full barn would give a community hope in ages long since passed.
Of course, we can only gather in, or reap, what we have sown. So, what do we sow into our lives? To paraphrase Aristotle, ‘we are what we most frequently do.’ What then do we do so frequently that we are sowing it into the fabric of our lives…for good or ill? Maybe we’re back to the busyness, electronic devices, and Pringles?

What does God want us to sow into our lives? Here on the estate where I live a small group of us have decided to sow missional rhythms into our day to day. We feel called to be dandelions. Maybe your first thought is of pesky weeds that grow in your lawn. It was mine too. But God has been teaching me things about dandelions which help to frame my approach to local community mission. I love how dandelions break up new ground and are often the first thing to grow in ground that is hard and damaged. I love that dandelions recognise what’s missing from the ground and put it back, feeding the soil to support new growth. I love that dandelions open to the sun during the day and of course, that they are windblown.

And it is with this in mind that our small group, ‘The Clockhouse,’ are sensing a call:

• To break up new ground through prayer.
• To feed the soil to support new growth through intentional relationships and a missional lifestyle.
• To be open to the Son and in so doing to point others to him as well.
• To be wind-blown, joining in with what God is doing, following the promptings of the Holy Spirit.Life is busy (back to the diary and devices) and it’s easy to slip, but this isn’t about doing a new thing or adding in another extra thing; but rather a posture of intent around how we already live our lives. For us the intent starts with seeds, like the seeds of a dandelion clock that are windblown.

Each day we will sow seeds by:

Seeking - Who does God want us to encounter today and what might that look like e.g. a very intentional, ‘How’s your day?’
Encounter – Doing it! Following through, noticing when God is prompting us.
Explain – to the group what has happened when we meet.
Discern – Praying and discerning together what God might be doing or saying.
Sent – Recognising where God has sent us and embracing our posture as sent people.


So, this harvest time how might God be asking us to adopt a posture of mission and intentionally plant seeds in our everyday? Seeds we might sow now for him to gather in at a later date? Here are a few resources that might help you:

National Day of Prayer for Schools 29th September
Ran by Pray for Schools, Youthscape, PAIS, Prayer Spaces in Schools, Scripture Union, Youth for Christ, and others, the vision is to mobilise Christians to support their school communities through prayer. All over the UK, groups of parents, teachers and schools workers meet on a regular basis to pray for their local schools. Join one of the online events to gather together in prayer for schools (register here to join a 30-minute prayer time for schools):
 
National Day of Prayer for Schools Tickets, Fri 29 Sep 2023 at 07:00 | Eventbrite

OIKOS Prayer App
Commit to praying for your community, to being a SEED and use the OIKOS prayer app to help you. It’s free and easy to use, simply download then tap to pin a prayer on a street or pray for a home.

Hope for Every Home : The Prayer App

If you are praying with others in or for an area you might want to join the pilot Prayer In Action project between Hope and Cinnamon Network. This gives you access to free training and resources beyond OIKOS to support you in missional listening and community mapping.

Contact Sammy for more information: Sammy.jordan@hopetogether.org.uk

Hope Magazines
Look out for the next issue of our Hope magazine available soon. With celebrity features and topical articles, as well as quizzes and competitions, it’s the perfect thing to give to friends and neighbours as we chat with them about faith. The Christmas issue would be perfect to deliver along with Christmas cards!

Talking of which…

Christmas Cards
Christmas cards are delivered into millions of homes every year so let’s use them to intentionally plant a seed that points to faith. This year we have Christmas cards, (including some fun Lego ones!) that relay the Christmas story in an accessible way but also signpost further resources, like the magazine. These will also be available from the website very soon.
 
‘We are what we most frequently do.’ For me, living missionally is not about doing another thing. It’s about a posture of intent every day, always prepared to be windblown. It’s about pivoting what I already do, so that it intentionally, but accessibly, points like a dandelion to the one I am living for, who wants to gather us all in to himself.