With the season of Fall upon us, farmers sound me are getting into their fields for harvest. This is an uncertain time as combines and grain trucks lumber down county roads. The smell of corn and beans rest upon the country air in the early morning haze and the last rays of day. 

In our first couple of parishes farmers would take a load or two to the local grain elevator and say, “This load is the Church’s.” Others would put signs the declared “God’s Acre” on a corner or two of their fields. Fall harvest heralds the end of a season as well as the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, a holiday increasingly by overshadowed by Halloween and Christmas. In one of his letters to the Thessalonians, Paul wrote, “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” God imprinted a spirit of gratitude upon the human heart. In that spirit we set aside a percentage of our own income and time and ask ourselves if we are doing not only what God wants us to do but to be. We are challenged to strive for significance more than success. When we do this, we become a glimpse of grace.