Lorikeets in Sydney
I love this prayer which I came across in David Adam’s Rhythm of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer. This book has long been a favourite of mine. I love to use it when I travel, finding that the short daily offices help to ground my spiritual practices during what can otherwise be a very disorienting journey.
How wonderful, O Lord, are the works of your hands!
The heavens declare your glory,
the arch of the sky displays your handiwork.
In your love you have given us the power
to behold the beauty of your world in all its splendour.
The sun and the stars, the valleys and the hills,
the rivers and the lakes, all disclose your presence.
The roaring breakers of the sea tell of your awesome might;
the beasts of the field and the birds of the air proclaim your wondrous will.
In your goodness you have made us able to hear the music of the world
the voices of loved ones reveal to us that you are in our midst.
A divine song sings through all creation.
For those of us who live in urban areas the music of God’s world is so often drowned out by the clatter and commotion of the world around us. This prayer reminds me of how much all of us need time amongst God’s good creation to reconnect once more to the divine song that reverberates through God’s world.
4 comments
One of my good friends has “Rhythm of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer,” and each time I stop by her house, I always sit down and read one of the prayers held within. I don’t recall ever coming across this particular one, and I love it! It’s such an uplifting, inspiring prayer that I know I’ll enjoy reading for some time to come.
Margo it is at the end of the Monday morning prayer.
Love this prayer. Maybe the Church has strayed too far from it’s Jewish roots. I recently discovered a book that brings a new perspective to the Early Church – Cover-Up: How the Church Silenced Jesus’s True Heirs by Lawrence Goudge . In this book, Goudge proposes that the Jewish followers of Jesus wanted social justice for the world. I have discovered a new book that shows how this social justice message was covered up by His Gentile followers. The church has blinkered its past. It’s no secret that Jesus strove to bring in the kingdom of justice here on earth and his followers implemented it in the communal society we read about in Acts 2:44-47. The church’s dirty secret is that the Jewish followers of Jesus continued to hold his vision dear, later influencing such sects as the Bogomils and even, according to their own oral traditions, the Doukhobors. After exterminating the Jewish followers of Jesus, the church’s historians buried this history of justice-seeking but an author by the name of Lawrence Goudge has exhumed their story and presented it in ‘Cover-Up: How the Church Silenced Jesus’s True Heirs.’ This book does the world a great service by illuminating for the first time this vital part of the history of social justice. I found it at http://tinyurl.com/69cazll.
Very interesting concept. I will obviously need to do some research into this.