January 21-February 4, our worship continues following our Church School curriculum from the autumn, Seeking Peace Together, as we learn in worship alongside the youngest members of our community.
We had just chosen the hymn In the Bleak Midwinter for our Advent midweek worship when we turned to planning some of our post-Christmas Sundays, and noted humorously the seeming incongruence of “Celebrating the Harvest” during the depths of the “Bleak Midwinter.” The text this week forms the basis of the holiday of Sukkot, or the Festival of Booths, that our Jewish siblings still celebrate to this day. In part a harvest festival, Sukkot typically falls during the autumn season in the northern hemisphere, calling forth images of ripe tomatoes, bushels of corn, baskets of green beans… you get the picture.
So how, then, do we celebrate the harvest in the wintertime? It would be easy to pick a different text, to let the stories and seasons align in a more fitting way…and yet, holding the Bible as our sacred text means trusting that any given passage has meaning to offer for our current moment. And so maybe the text this week is nudging us all to ask: what does it look like to celebrate abundance in times of scarcity?
Join us in worship at 11am in the Sanctuary or on YouTube to explore, pray, sing, and celebrate communion together!
In faith,
Amy
Image credit: “Psalm 67” by John August Swanson
