O most high, Almighty, good Lord God, to you belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing. Praised be my Lord God for all his creatures, and especially for our brother the sun, who brings us the day ...
Leader: Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! People: You have set your glory above the heavens! Leader: From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, ...
Psalm 8 reminds us, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have created; What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you care...
Leader: O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! People: You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength Leade...
Leader: Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights above. People: Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his heavenly hosts. Leader: Praise him, sun and moon...
I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved and he who watches over you will not...
If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...
Now if I believe in God's Son and remember that He became man, all creatures will appear a hundred times more beautiful to me than before. Then I will properly appreciate the sun, the moon, the st...
1 Corinthians 6:19, 1 Peter 2:9, 2 Corinthians 4:6, Ephesians 5:8-10, Matthew 5:14-16, 1 John 1:5-7
Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson taught me why space is dark. Why does our sun not light up space? The answer is fairly simple: light needs something to reflect off of. Sunlight from our sun and oth...
I asked the earth, I asked the sea and the deeps, among the living animals, the things that creep. I asked the winds that blow, I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars and to all things that...
J.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon has a passage that conveys the attractive and terrifying aspects of the mystery of God: It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, th...
John 12:35-36, John 8:12, Isaiah 60:1-3, Isaiah 60:5, Isaiah 60:1-3
Leader: Jesus said to them, "The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you." People: Arise, shine; for your light has come, an...
Wake up! Get out of bed! Feel the sunlight on your face! Feel God’s bright glory has risen for you. But the earth is dark. Everywhere we look there is selfishness sin, greed, death, destruction. You ...
O Lord. You created the stars and named every one of them. We have named some of the clusters like Pleiades or Orion. The Big and Little Dippers, Aquarius, Libra, Andromeda. But we can’t name them all...
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemi...
Romans 3:10-12, James 2:10, Luke 18:9-14, Matthew 5:48, Ecclesiastes 7:20
To see with God’s eyes, suppose we were to compare one person’s morals to being in Death Valley, 280 feet below sea level; another person’s morals to being in Denver, the mile-high city; and another p...
What was the star of Bethlehem? Maybe it was Jupiter. Celestial conjunctions were very important to ancient astrologers. Three significant conjunctions occurred around the time Christ was born: two...
Psalm 121:, Jeremiah 16:14-15, Matthew 6:25-34, Matthew 6:30, Psalm 91:11-12
Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Historical Background In our modern world we know so much about our universe that it is easy to forget that in the Bible there is a connection between ...
My dear King, my own King, without pride, without sin, You created the whole world, eternal, victorious King. King of the mysteries, You existed before the elements, before the waters covered the ocea...
O God, you judge your people with righteousness; we judge our neighbors either right or wrong. Your Servant defended the cause of the poor; it is because of our greed that many still want. You bring d...
In my book Red Moon Rising, I described a time on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza when an Anglican priest asked a bunch of young missionaries sent out by our organization to pray for rain because th...
In Jane Smiley’s novel Horse Heaven, Buddy Crawford, a horse trainer, has a “born again experience but things don’t go according to plan. This is his prayer: “One night, when he was praying his usu...
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up pers...
Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 18:22-35, Luke 16:19-31, Matthew 13:3-8, Matthew 20:1-16, Matthew 13:24-33, Matthew 13:44-50, Mark 4:26-29
The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Ta...
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how ...
If you read through G.K. Chesterton’s writings, it will not be long before you recognize the recurring theme of joy. Joy, Chesterton believed, ought to be a central experience of the one who realizes ...
In Genesis 1–2, God makes a home for his people. From the primeval wilderness and wasteland God begets beauty and form, building the grand house called Earth. God’s creative acts are not simply intend...
Where did the observation of a Sabbath come from? Nahum Sarna points out that it is never instituted within Scripture. Instead, it is taken for granted that the people already observe it: “There can...