It’s been a very full month at our church. There were the annual meeting, officer training, and ordination and installation. There has been pulling together of several activities to respond to earthquake-stricken Haiti (including a community-wide “Help for Haiti” concert for which we helped provide music and Haitian rice and beans and an upcoming Lent workshop to prepare disaster hygiene kits for Church World Service).
In times which feel hurried and turbulent, we also need to be able to step back at times, to know that God is present – and not only in the arising needs which call for our attention, but also in the ongoing rhythms and patterns of life.
Yesterday, with the ground well blanketed with white, more snowflakes fell – gently, not intensely enough to tie up traffic or cancel events – but hour after quiet hour. It reminded me that I had come across a poem I hoped to share at such a time. It is from a wonderful collection titled Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon:
How shall the mighty river
reach the tiny seed?
See it rise silently
to the sun’s yearning,
sail from a winter’s cloud
flake after silent flake
piling up layer upon layer
until the thaw of spring
to meet the seedling’s need.
Make tender, Lord, my heart:
release through gentleness
Thine own tremendous power
hid in the snowflake’s art.
Antoinette Adam
Peace,
Rod
Presbyterian Church in Burlington 