Sunday 7th Sunday - Grace and thankfulness

 At the zoom church service today we celebrated our harvest festival. 

I'd already read today's blogposts by Ang and Frugally Challenged, so I was especially conscious of noticing things to be thankful for, and things that blessed us.

In the harvest festival service were several traditional harvest hymns, including 'We plough the fields and scatter'

The refrain goes

All good gifts around us are sent from heav’n above;

Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all His love.

We often sing this together before a shared Harvest Supper, or any other shared meal at my home church. (We joke that our church does love a shared meal)

Later, in a novel I am reading (engrossed in would be closer!) someone said a grace before a meal, remembered from their days as an undergraduate at Oxford;

Benedictus benedicat, which means 'may the Blessed One give a blessing'

And finally, the harvest hymn refrain reminded me of this little sung grace I learned from the children at a Church of England primary school;

Thank you for the world so sweet, ho hum.

Thank you for the food we eat, yum, yum.

Thank you for the birds that sing-a-ling-a-ling.

Thank you God for everything,

Ho hum, yum yum, sing-a-ling,

Amen!

Grace before meals. I'm not good at remembering to say it, but thankful when I do remember.