The gift of summer
It is already August and, as usual I find myself often wondering where the time has gone. . Summer is, for me, synonymous with the sounds of sprinklers, birds, kids laughs and squabbles, and with unending pitchers of sun tea, and gardening. There is something so incredibly satisfying in ripping out weeds, and cutting the flowers we chose, planted, fed, and grew. In choosing the topic for this weeks’ devotional, I knew I wanted to celebrate God’s gift of summer. I wanted to dwell in the joys of God’s creativity, and sit in Isaiah 55:12: “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” Whether we have green thumbs or black ones, whether we thrill in the gardening and tilling of soil, or investing in others to do it for us, our honor of our little plots, be it acres, window boxes, or an herb pot on our kitchen windowsills, the nurturing of growing things should remind us of our labors in Christ. Jesus referenced gardening in John 15 likely because it is a metaphor easily understood and highly relatable, and it is probably no coincidence that for many of us, caring for our individual plots is connective to our Creator. Even those of us without interest in, or ability to, gardening can appreciate litanies of flowers, bountiful fruit trees, glowing green lawns, and sweet, ripe fruit, picked straight from the earth. Each one is a gift from heaven; a prayer, celebrating God’s boundless creativity, His bottomless love, and His joy in creating good things.
Summer is a liturgy for gardening, for living things. Summer is a liturgy of His bountiful blessings.
One of my favorite books, lately a series, is Every Moment Holy. This treasure is a collection of well written, thoughtful, prayers designed to connect our lives, simply lived, to Christ through liturgy. I share with you one of my favorite ones, in celebration of summer and in the sweet life God has given us. I encourage you to take this liturgy both literally and metaphorically, and dwell on the joy and privilege that is caring for the earth, and the growing, pruning, and harvesting of our faith.
Soli Deo gloria.
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A Liturgy for Gardening
O Creator who calls forth life, may this ground, and our labors here invested, yield good provision for the nourishing of both body and soul.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.
As we work in the soil of this garden plot – furrowing, planting, watering, and harvesting- may such acts become to us a living parable, a prayer acted out rather than spoken.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.
As we co-labor with you and with your creation to produce a beneficial harvest, may we find in such toil a kind of rest. May this plot of ground become a hallowed space and these hours a sacred time for reflection, for conversation with friends and family, and for fellowship with you, our Creator.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.
Through our tending of these your delightful creations- vegetables and fruits, beans and berries, vines and stalks and roots and flowers - renew our own tired hopes, redeem our own wearied imaginations.
As we cultivate gentle order,
training,
pruning,
weeding,
and protecting,
So cultivate and train our wayward hearts, O Lord, that rooted in you the forms of our lives might spread in winsome witness, maturing to bear the good fruit of grace, expressed in acts of compassionate love.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.
Walk with us now, O Lord, in the stillness of this tilled and quiet space, that when we venture again into the still greater garden of your world, we might be prepared by the long practice of your presence, to offer our lives as a true and nourishing provision to all who hunger for
mercy
and hope
and meaning,
a true and nourishing provision to all who hunger for you.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.
Amen.
Douglas Kaine McKelvey. Every Moment Holy (Nashville, TN: Rabbit Room Press, 2019), 94-96.
—Dia Murphy Farquhar