This liturgy is taken from Every Moment Holy Volume 3Â from Rabbit Room Press. You can find more liturgies like these at EveryMomentHoly.com.
by Douglas McKelvey
O God Who Planted a Garden and gave it
into the care of our first father and mother,
Let me now tend these grounds, this yard,
this plot of land ’round my dwelling—not as
an endless, thankless annoyance, but as
a glad and faithful stewarding. Let me find
delight in the shaping of this landscape
into a more ordered and beautiful place.
Let my labors cultivate a space wherein
friends and family might meet, or play,
or simply pause and take delight.
Indeed, Lord, let me consciously love
my neighbors through this act, by laboring
to bring order and beauty to their
neighborhood, passively affirming
their dignity through diligence in
my own stewardship of lands
their eyes must daily dwell upon.
Through my tending of living, growing
things, let me offer those who dwell
nearby refreshing glimpses of beauty
rather than of clutter and decay,
of harmony rather than disorder, and
of attentive care rather than long neglect.
As you commissioned Adam and Eve
to cultivate and expand the borders of
that first garden, so would I express
your deep care of all creation in my own
endeavors today. I would invest my sweat
to nurture and enhance the graceful lay of
these grounds, that they might be better
liberated to speak a truer word.
And though I must toil now, hindered
by the limitations of a broken world, still
let my labors lean into that truer vision
of this lawn—and of all nature—liberated
at last from the great groaning of creation,
no longer fraught with drought and thorn
and weed, and need of constant moil merely
to make it something other than unruly.
Indeed, let me glimpse in the fruits of
this struggle some hint of what it might
mean, O Christ, to cultivate this
corner of creation in a time after you
have fashioned all things anew.
What might it mean to co-labor then
with these redeemed and willing lands,
shaping them into artful places—lush
and beautiful and bursting with unexpected
delights, bringing joy to hearts and pleasure
to eyes; to craft a complex harmony of
fragrance, form, and hue, that those
robed in renewed bodies might one day
wander through, and be moved to wonder
and to worship?
What might it mean to meet no more
resistance in the nature of things,
but instead to enjoy a ready partnership
with tree and soil and hedge and
budding flower, all responding—with the
right delight of leafy things—to my
every tender tending, as I shepherd their
shapes to a more exquisite beauty and a more
sublime expression of grace? As I tease out
the quiet depths of each of these living,
radiant displays of your glory and your joy?
Ah Lord, let me approach my labors even now,
this day, in anticipation of that coming day
when blight will be no more; when the glory
of the Lord will rest gentle upon these lands,
ever blessing these works of our hands; when
the order and beauty of our gardens will
emerge as ceaseless songs of praise.
Let me lift that veil in some small way
even by my labors today, O Lord.
Let me glimpse in growing things, some
hint of your unseen kingdom. Let me
shape here a living poetry
that whispers words of grace
to all who pause to listen.
Amen.
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