A disposition of thankfulness

5 October 2025

The Ven Louise Ellis

I have always loved gardening. I have wonderful childhood memories of spending time in the garden with my grandad and then coming in for lunch or tea where Grandma had prepared a spread of many home grown goodies from the garden.

Roll on a few years and in our first vicarage we had a large garden, and we built an allotment area. My Grandma had died during my curacy and my granddad a couple of years later as we were building our allotment. We acquired many of his old tools and gardening notebooks and some rhubarb. The wonder of planting tiny seeds and months later harvesting potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and much more was a great joy.

Of course, there were also frustrations and disappointments. I remember one morning going out and discovering all the runner beans had been eaten overnight. There were literally none left.

In recent years our garden has not leant itself to a full allotment, but we have grown what we can in pots. We are now back into full planning mode having moved again, this time with plenty of space for an allotment.

It is great joy and a privilege to be here with you today for this service. I have always loved harvest festival, after 19 years of parish ministry I still looked forward to the annual harvest festivals.

I have memories of Harvest Festival as a child. We didn’t regularly go to church, but I went to a church of England primary school, and we always celebrated harvest. I remember decorating and filling my shoe box with food and bringing it in, I remember visiting the Alms houses, knocking on the door and giving it to a resident.

I wondered this year, if I would get to celebrate a harvest service. Being at a different church each week and harvest services happening on different weeks in different places I didn’t know if the weeks would tie up. In fact, this is the second harvest service I have had the joy of being part of. Indeed, a reason for Thanksgiving.

When I left my curacy, one of my congregations gave me a gift. It’s framed, beautifully handwritten calligraphy of some of the verse we heard in our second reading. I have had it in in my study ever since.

‘ Have no anxiety about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

‘But in everything with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.’

What does it look like to have an attitude of thanksgiving?  We know that there is all too much in this word that is broken: inequality and oppression, division, violence, greed, pain, fear. There is much of which we despair and long to be different. It can be easy to feel despondent.

An attitude of thankfulness does not diminish the needs; it is not a trite response of everything’s ok. We bring our prayers and supplications to God, we cry out for justice, in our prayers and in our actions, through the choices we make every day. We advocate for change, play our part in making a better world, challenging injustice, living lives of compassion humility, and love and in all things giving thanks.

I don’t know about you but in my experience sometimes it is natural and easy to give thanks – when the sun is shining (literally or metaphorically) …when the harvest is good.

Yet sometimes we feel weighed down with the troubles of this world or with personal grief, sadness, anxiety. What does ‘thanksgiving in all things’ mean when we are struggling? Perhaps we can simply thank God that a new day has begun, or for the rain, for the unexpected kind word or smile or gesture of another. Even on the toughest of days there are things to be thankful for.

Each of us could list many things that vex us, cause us to be anxious, those things are real, and an attitude of thanksgiving does not diminish that.

In the address following the announcement of her nomination as the next Archbishop of Canterbury Bishop Sarah Mullally reflected on where she sees hope:

Hope she says is made of the infinite love of God, who breathed life into creation and said it was good. Hope shimmered in the courage of Abraham and Sarah and the challenging call of the prophets. Hope resounded through Mary’s ‘yes’ to God’s call to bear His Son. Hope is found in Christ’s triumph over sin and death.

Hope doesn’t skip over grief, pain and messiness of life but enters into it, and tenderly tells us that God is with us.

Mindful of the horrific violence of Thursdays attack on a synagogue in Manchester, she comments that we are witnessing hatred that rises up through fractures across our communities.  Yet, she proclaims, the God who is with us draws near to those who suffer. We then, as a Church, have a responsibility to be a people who stand with the Jewish community against antisemitism in all its forms. Hatred and racism of any kind cannot be allowed to tear us apart.

In her reflection Bishop sarah notes that in the apparent chaos which surrounds us, in the midst of such profound global uncertainty, the possibility of healing lies in acts of kindness and love.

Where do you see acts of kindness and love?

where do you find hope?

How do you live out kindness and love?

Sometimes, an attitude of thankfulness is simply about noticing. Pausing long enough to notice the beauty of the world around us, the wonder of creation, the fruits of the harvest, the kindness of a stranger, the signs of hope and joy and love.

We are active participants in developing a disposition of thankfulness. Being alert and attentive to the presence of God, seeking to grow a disposition in which our hearts and hands are open to the presence of God.

Ignatian spirituality speaks of finding God in all things, of noticing the presence of God, deepening our awareness of God.

Where are the places for you, when are the times when you glimpse something afresh of what God is like, and of the values that reign in his kingdom?

What helps you to notice the presence of God in all things?

Where do you see hope?

How might each of us seek to nurture a disposition of thankfulness?

For me, I know there is a link between my awareness of the presence of God, my noticing God in all things and a disposition of thankfulness.

How can you seek to nurture a disposition of thankfulness?