Worship Materials: Spring
From the Seasoned Celebration collection
THEME The Flowing Sap
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
- The fragrance of Spring lies not in judgement’s intervention but in love’s nurturing of the interior goodness.
- Spring is not so much a moment as a movement, a manifestation of the sometimes hidden but always present life-force of God.
- Birth is seldom painless – change always has its price.
- When the mind flows like sap unlimited possibilities emerge and we become liberated from endless cycles of mechanical repetition.
- Like germinating seed forcing its way through the paving, slow, gentle pressure is usually the best way to move psychological mountains.
- The activist who has no depth of inner resources is like the seed that falls on barren soil.
- Seriousness can inhibit the flow of our ‘spirit’s sap. Humor can enhance it.
- People grow through affirmation not through judgment.
PRAYER
O God of gentle power, help us to focus our energies
so that we may break out of all confining ways of thought and blossom into fullness of life.
HYMNS
May the sap flow in our hearts. (BL)
You are the process God. (BL)
The spring will come again.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/whakapono/online-resources/hymns/the-mystery-telling
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
NATURE’S GREEN WONDER
Nature’s green wonder – Spring!
The meeting of God
in the arteries and veins of this world,
the point where the ordinary becomes otherness
and eternity breaks into the time-serving.
It is season of recurrent renewal
when green’s myriad shades
woo us into imitating nature’s creativity,
and love’s dreams fortify us against
the souls’ inevitable winters.
LIKE THE PETALS
Like the petals of the flower I unfold,
Like the roots of the plants I draw life,
Like the leaves in the wind I dance and sing
And in it all I encounter the Christ.
SPRING PILGRIMAGE
To this place, I came
with pilgrim heart
bearing the remains
of my buried-by-paper,
programme-dissected life.
I came
to re-live past springs
of solitary childhood,
passionate adolescence
and all-too-busy adulthood.
I came to immerse myself
in a world of exquisite beauty;
of buds bursting as wide open
as birthday party eyes
of children.
But I heard
night’s blanket of stillness
pierced by the helpless
cry of a lamb and saw,
next day,
crushed grass stained by the blood
of birth.
That cry and that blood
shattered the unreal dreams
of my daffodil mind‑
(dreams of effortless creativity
and painless renewal)
instead, I heard
earth’s starving poor
urging me
to make cause
with that far greater spring,
the liberating and maturing
of the human race.
SPRING
Spring,
God’s fragile mystery of resurrection ‑
yours is the over-flowing beauty of young oaks’
filigreed foliage,
of pendant ash flowers
and the fiery emergence of poplar leaves
in all their wet-eyed wonder.
You are nature’s embryo,
a silent exaltation
of all that is
soft,
tender
and beautiful;
a golden effusion
of love and heaven,
of stillness and freshness –
the Spirit’s greening time
when Earth’s rebirth
foreshadows our own.
Each spring
approached
with joyful reverence
becomes
an epidemic
of mystery and resurrection ‑
an epidemic to which
through God’s grace
we shall succumb!
FOCUS FOR ACTION
- The Easter of nature will only bring new life to our spirit if we are prepared with delight to watch its potential unfold. What are some of the potentials within our own spirituality? Do we notice the signs of change in our life? Do we discern the indicators in other people? Are we willing to share with them what we have noticed?
- What is the nature of the shell which must be broken if our spirituality is to grow.
- The beginnings of spiritual growth lie in affirming the Inner Christ – that of God – the I AM within us. Do we feel happy with the idea that God is in part within us or do we give to someone else the divinity that is our own and in the process effectively deny that we are Children of God?
Text and image © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.