Gifts of Creation

Good Morning All,

Here it is 3 days after we celebrated Earth Stewardship Day and so much of what happened as we worshipped together and many of the readings and music we shared, still resonate in my heart and mind. That’s how it is with experiences that speak to us; they’re meant to be captured by the wind and come back to us time and time again. In the gentlest of offerings I share some of them with you in the hope that they will speak to you as together we remember, in the words of Matthew Fox, God’s “Original Blessing”—the gifts of creation, whose care-giving has been entrusted to us.

“Praise God!..
Praise God, sun and moon; praise God all you shining stars!
…Praise God, you highest heavens…sea monsters and all the deeps, fire and hail,
snow and frost, stormy wind…mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars…
wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds…rulers and all peoples…
Praise God!” (Psalm 24)

The angelic voices of the children allowed us to see firsthand that God had indeed created them and all children, ever so bright and beautiful:
All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful, in love God made them all…”
(“All Things Bright and Beautiful” Cecil F. Alexander, words; Martin Shaw, melody)

Psalm 24: 1-2 set the stage for “The Creation Connection”:
“The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the word and those who live in it;
for God has founded it on the seas and established it on the rivers.”

Followed by a most wonderful poem penned by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God.
Only he who sees, takes off his shoes.
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”

When we take time to remove our shoes as opposed to simply plucking the blackberries of our routine busyness, we can affirm that the Earth is indeed “crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.” These words certainly can be heard as an invitation that beckons us to see the wonders of nature as gifts from God and our call to be stewards of the Earth’s resources.

But in them I also hear an invitation to look for God all around us, not just in the beauty of the natural world; but in whatever we experience throughout each day--leaving very little to circumstance or happenstance. Seeing “every common bush afire with God” paints the backdrop for our day, from the time we awaken each morning until we lie down for a night’s rest. And against this backdrop the scenes of our life unfold bit by bit, moment by moment. “Oh, the places you’ll go today; the people you’ll meet…” (Dr. Seuss)

Look around you, people of God!
Blackberries are not yet in season ‘round here;
the warmth of Spring begs us to take off our shoes…
We are standing on Holy Ground… (jvb)

Blessings, Joanne