nature on Mother's Day

We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts”

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

You make everything beautiful in its season, Creator. You are faithful, and summer, with warm air and green fields, has returned to bless our land. We thank you for the change of seasons, the melting ...

Almighty God, Creator: The morning is Yours, rising into fullness.  The summer is Yours, dipping into autumn.  Eternity is Yours, dipping into time.  The vibrant grasses, the scent of flowers,  the li...

The guillemot, a small Arctic seabird, nests in dense colonies on the rocky cliffs of the North Atlantic and Arctic. Thousands of these birds gather in tight spaces, with hundreds of females laying th...

Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will percei...

Pastor: Almighty and everlasting God, who willed that your Son should bear for us the pains of the cross and thereby remove from us the power of the adversary, help us to remember and give thanks al...

O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty: Open our eyes to your gracious hand in all your works; so that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for ...

Gracious God, for the goodness and beauty of creation we thank you. For the way your creation nurtures and inspires us, we are grateful. Yet, the more we pay attention to the world, the more we see i...

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

When Tara and I learned we were pregnant for the first time, we went right out and bought a crib. You might have done the same. The act of selecting, purchasing, and assembling a crib is deeply cathar...

A large part of what it means to be human is to be one who longs after things. Sometimes, we have trouble putting into words the longings inside us. Take for example these words from Anne Frank, just ...

In 1879, the preservationist and explorer John Muir took his first trip to Alaska. As he explored the fjords and rocky landscapes of Alaska’s now famous Glacier Bay, a powerful feeling struck him all ...

O Great Spirit, whose breath gives life to the world, and whose voice is heard in the soft breeze; We need your strength and wisdom. Cause us to walk in beauty. Give us the eyes ever to behold the red...

Lord, there is no seedling in the thicket that does not call you its maker. And I, too, come knowing that whatever the quality of my life is, it is thou, O God, who stamped your purpose on my soul. So...

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

I am abashed, solitary, helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me. But this sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pur...

Among the hills a meteorite Lies huge; and moss has overgrown And wind and rain with touches light Made soft, the contours of the stone. Thus easily can Earth digest A cinder of sidereal fire, And ...

Preaching Summary An Incomplete Trinity? Protestant churches who lean evangelical but not charismatic have occasionally been accused of being more “binitarian” than “trinitarian.”  The suggestion i...

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

Merciful God, loving Father, you govern all things in heaven and on earth and make all things new through your almighty word. Transform our sinful nature and all that we do by the power of your Holy S...

The custody of the garden was given in charge to Adam, to show that we possess the things which God has committed to our hands, on the condition that, being content with the frugal and moderate use of...

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains.  There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously.  Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains.  There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously.  Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

O God, whose reason rules the world, who formed the starry heights above, timeless, time’s chain far forth you hurled, unmoved, gave all things power to move. Prevailed on by no outside cause to fashi...

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

The daily e-newsletter 1440, tries to share regular stories of human kindness. This one, from Carl G. in Noblesville, Indiana, is quite touching:  My daughter just got married and was on Southwest...

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...

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty...

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, ...