For the Beauty of the Earth (ELW 879)
Devotion
For the beauty of the earth,
for the beauty of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies:
Refrain
Christ, our God, to thee we raise
this our sacrifice of praise.
For the wonder of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale and tree and flow'r,
sun and moon and stars of light: Refrain
For the joy of ear and eye,
for the heart and mind's delight,
for the mystic harmony
linking sense to sound and sight: Refrain
For the joy of human love,
brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth and friends above;
for all gentle thoughts and mild: Refrain
For each perfect gift of thine,
peace on earth and joy in heav'n;
for thyself, best gift divine,
to our world so freely giv'n: Refrain
We have one earth. We have one place to live which sustains who we are as humans. As we are called together as one body in Christ we are also called to recognize all creation as God's creation. Is this creation a part of the body?
I wonder how differently we would live if we saw the earth like God does. Each phase of the creation story reminds us that God saw what had been created and said, "It is good." What if we lived content with the resources at hand rather than wanting what our neighbor has? What if we learned to rejoice in the places we live—the sufficiency of the land and our own bodies and our family and friends and artists and teachers? What if we could rejoice each morning and night in the beauty that God has created? Would we treat each other differently? Would we treat the earth differently? Would we finally believe that we actually live in a world of abundance?
Prayer
Lord, open our eyes to the beauty and abundance of your creation and let us see the intimate connectedness that you have engineered. Amen.