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The highlight of the church calendar at this time of year is the harvest service. Fresh fruit and vegetables are tastefully arranged and occasionally some stalks of wheat may make an appearance. More thoughtful congregations bring along tins and packets of food, in recognition of the connection between all we eat and the land.

During recent weeks I have become more aware of the extent of the disconnection between our food supply and what happens on the land. August 2008 was the wettest August in NI since 1914 and the cloudiest since 1929. Harvest has been a disaster, cereal and potato crops have rotted and are literally rotting in the fields. Yet life goes on, we blithely assume that food will be available in our supermarkets for us to buy, some of which we do eat but an astonishing amount of which we throw away. Many of us read in our Tearfund magazines about harvests failing in other parts of the world and the resultant worry about whether there be enough food to last the whole of the next year. But when harvest fails here there is no such concern. Why?

God has been, and is, amazingly generous to humankind. He was thrilled at how good His creation work was. Essentially humankind has squandered the goodness of creation - this began at the fall, this is part of the fall. Think of all the oil that recent generations have been able to exploit and the technologically sophisticated fossil-fuel dependent lifestyles we enjoy. Think too of all the waste, the pollution, the gases that are heating up the planet, that we are reluctant to do anything about.

What will it take for us to become thankful for God's provision, for us to believe that how we live here and now in this generation matters - that giving cups of water to our brothers and sisters is about sharing the earth's resources with our fellow human beings who are trapped by international trade injustices, by corruption in governance in their own countries, by adverse environmental conditions, but primarily by our greed and thoughtlessness - however that has been transmitted and transferred economically and politically?

Now that food and fuel are becoming more expensive we are tightening our belts and bemoaning our lot. The wealthy west and north is facing lean years without having had a Joseph to store grain for us. At the same time we have been blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). And yet we hold on to our material riches. Jesus, when He was here on earth, had very little by way of material possessions, yet He gave so much to so many day by day.

'He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.' Jim Elliot

Ethel White