Harvest Collection

This Sunday we will be celebrating our harvest thanksgiving and we will be having a collection of dried goods for the Cambridge City Foodbank.



The needs of the Foodbank are constantly changing. If you want to know the sort of things that are most needed here's a copy of their up to date shopping list.

 Tinned Rice Pudding
 Tinned fruit
 Tinned Potatoes
 Instant Potato Powder
 Soup
 Yellow Pasta (e.g. spaghetti in tomato sauce)
 Tinned pulses
 Instant coffee - small jars
 Sweets - childrens & adults
 Snacks
 Pasta ‘n’ Sauce mix
 Pasta Sauce - jars
 Dried Milk Powder
 Sponge Puddings (Longlife)
 Granulated sugar - 500grm bags
 Cooking Oil - 500ml
 Tea bags 40’s or 80’s
 Biscuits

 Small salt & pepper

On Sunday we'll also be looking at the work of BMS World Mission in Nepal - but more of that tomorrow.

Happy Harvest

Last week we looked at some of the festivals that make up the Jewish calendar. For those of you who have been looking at some of this material as a part of home group or for general interest, this coming Sunday we're going to very briefly mention the Festival of Tabernacles or Booths.

Tabernacles is the harvest celebration that comes at the end of the agricultural year - as opposed to Firstfruits that comes at the beginning of the barley harvest (March/April) or Weeks that comes at the beginning of the wheat harvest (May/June). [See Leviticus 23 for more detail.]

This year Tabernacles is being celebrated from 27 September - 5 October - remembering that the celebration begins at twilight. So our church harvest service falls within this week of celebration.

The Festival of Tabernacles is a joyous occasion.

In the OT the festival was accompanied with numerous animal sacrifices for each day of the festival - as you'll see from the detail below, which comes from Numbers 29.

				Burnt Offering			Sin Offering
Day	OT Date	2015		Bulls	Rams	Lambs	Goat
1	15 day of 7th month (Tisri)	27-28 Sept**	Sacred Assembly - do no work	13*	2*	14*	1
2	16 Tisri	28-29 Sept		12*	2*	14*	1
3	17 Tisri	29-30 Sept		11*	2*	14*	1
4	18 Tisri	30-1 Sept/Oct		10*	2*	14*	1
5	19 Tisri	1-2 Oct		9*	2*	14*	1
6	20 Tisri	2-3 Oct		8*	2*	14*	1
7	21 Tisri	3-4 Oct		7*	2*	14*	1
8	22 Tisri	4-5 Oct	Sacred Assembly - do no work	1*	1*	7*	1
Totals				71 bulls	15 rams	105 lambs	8 goats
				225kg of flour***	32kg of flour***	111kg of flour***

*With each of the burnt offerings the following grain offering is to be made:

With each bull - 3/10 of an ephah of fine flour mixed with olive oil

With each ram - 1/5 of an ephah of fine flour mixed with olive oil

With each lamb - 1/10 of an ephah of fine flour mixed with olive oil

These offerings are in addition to the normal daily regular burnt offering and any freewill offering the people wish to make.

** In 2015 the celebration starts at twilight on 27 September. Final day ends on 5 October.

*** These values are given purely to provide an indication of the quantities we are talking about. The calculation of the amount of flour is based on 1 ephah = 22 litres; 1 litre = 4 cups; 1 cup = 120g of flour. Depending on the type of flour, humidity etc etc there could be a wide margin of error with these values - they are simply an indication of the quantity spoken of.