I’m very lucky to live just five minutes’ walk from some of Sheffield’s lovely suburban parks, and just ten minutes’ drive from the edge of the Derbyshire Peak District. I wonder if you’ve had the same experience as I have during the last year, of ‘re-discovering’ the beauty of God’s creation of trees, grass, water, hills, moorland, birdsong, sun, wind – and rain!
One of my favourite poems is by James Weldon Johnson, the African American writer and civil rights activist. ‘The Creation’ is a beautiful, dynamic re-imagining of the first chapter of Genesis, painting in words an image of God’s physical involvement in the act of creation:
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!
Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!
Then God himself stepped down –
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up…
This is just a short extract from the poem, but there’s a real sense of God’s ‘hands-on’ process of creation, of God’s physical presence in creation. I invite you to take some time this week to read the whole poem (you can find it online at https://poets.org/poem/creation) and to reflect on the presence of God in creation around you.
God of creation,
We praise you for all you have made,
From the greatest thing to the smallest.
We thank you for all your good gifts,
Given to us with such lavish generosity.
We repent of our thoughtlessness and inaction
In caring for the world around us.
We ask you to open our eyes once again
To the wonder and beauty and fragility of your world.
Amen
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This week’s prayer and image by Jude Simms
