Tag: Sunday missive
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Earth is our home
A pastor of mine often ended his prayers with “this is not our home,” telling us that we’re here briefly while in transit to heaven, so we should not get wrapped up in Earth. But the pastor is mistaken. We’ve been placed on this planet for seventy (more or less) years to glorify and love…
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Close to God in his nature: the joy of creation
John Muir’s inspiration, joy, and rhapsody while in nature are evident in his experience at a glacier in Alaska: “Standing here, with facts so fresh and telling and held up so vividly before us, every seeing observer, not to say geologist, must readily apprehend the earth-sculpturing, landscape-making action of flowing ice. And here, too, one…
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The Importance of Small
Cast on, bind off—the words a knitter uses when starting and finishing a knitting project. Michelle Obama, in her book The Light We Carry, in one of the chapters tells us of the importance and the peace of being absorbed in the small, and of the satisfaction of doing and completing small tasks. She writes…
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Face to face with God . . . in his nature
In the quiet of nature, we find ourselves face to face with God’s love of life and variety of life, his cycles of life and death and life again, the immensity of his time and space, and with the wonders and wisdom by which he created the universe. At the seashore, on a mountaintop, in…
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Messy in Nature
It’s messy sometimes, writing while in nature. I’ve sand on my shorts and sand on the bike bag that I’m using as a writing surface. Rain drizzle smears the lines on wide-ruled notebook paper as my pen attempts to scribble this morning’s thoughts. Words don’t appear on wet paper, so I skip a few lines…
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“Go Where the Good Is” and “Learn How to Be Useful”
“Go where the good is” and “Learn how to be useful”: simple phrases that, when enacted upon, have enormous consequences.[note: This is a re-post (with some edits) from a blog page that I once administered. It was originally posted 21 May 2021.] Last night, I told my son Pat that I was proud of him.…
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Creation theology: the truths we learn.
God created the heavens and the Earth, or more specifically, through his spirit he molded all the planets, stars, and the life they sustain, using energy, elements, and physical laws of the universe. He engineered the cosmos through gravity, atomic forces, chemical and genetic relationships, and more. We now know that Earth is 4.5 billion…
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God’s Wisdom in Nature
God, in his wisdom and through the millennia, has evolved and woven together a rich web of creatures and plants that sustains and propagates life and the variety of life that he obviously (because he made so much of it) loves. We’re blessed to be able to explore, understand, appreciate, and care for (when we…
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Trees—on Joyce Kilmer’s Day
Trees, trees, and more trees“Trees, trees and more trees,” was Golden Gate Park Supervisor John McLaren’s motto when he helped design the shaded, pleasant, walkable, and popular Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon. Trees, we know (besides making our neighborhoods cooler and more pleasant), are part of the solution to the climate crisis. Only God can…
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God’s nature advocacy
God’s nature advocacy: The application by people of faith of their talents toward Earth stewardship. Just as we serve God in discipleship, caring for the poor and afflicted, pastoring, singing, cooking for the congregation, volunteering in church projects, supporting youth, and the myriad other ways that God has made possible for us to express his…
MRM Conservation 