Cause For Applause...

We were challenged this past Sunday

to let our worship to God be a wonder-full springboard for the day!

 The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof,
the world and all who dwell therein.

 Psalm 24:1

The birth of day spills heaven’s songs

To throngs of need-greed-grit

Where earth and all therein belongs

To He who ordained it

His workmanship is beautiful

His ‘let there be’s’ amaze

Where nothing is more pitiful

Than hearts bereft of praise

For nature has not ceased its hymns

Nor let its wonder die

Since dawn of Time its worship brims

To God from sod-sea-sky

The layout of life’s solemn charge

Should author shades of shame

If we, aboard earth’s mercy-barge

Forget to praise His name

The Name that saves, comforts and heals

The Name above all names

The only Name whose love reveals

The devil’s awful aims

…and ushers hope to hopeless hearts

Where gloom would fill this shell  

Save for His blood that quenches darts

Drenched with the doom of hell

Then take a lesson from the leaves

From birds or blooms that nod

From seas that strum sand-harps or sheaves

Bent with the proof of God

This dot of blue is not some fluke

Tossed to a starry maze

But cups Love’s favor and rebuke

To author songs of praise

© Janet Martin

The Worship of Nature

By John Greenleaf Whittier

 

The harp at Nature’s advent strung

      Has never ceased to play;

The song the stars of morning sung

      Has never died away.

And prayer is made, and praise is given,

      By all things near and far;

The ocean looketh up to heaven,

      And mirrors every star.

Its waves are kneeling on the strand,

      As kneels the human knee,

Their white locks bowing to the sand,

      The priesthood of the sea!

They pour their glittering treasures forth,

      Their gifts of pearl they bring,

And all the listening hills of earth

      Take up the song they sing.

The green earth sends its incense up

      From many a mountain shrine;

From folded leaf and dewy cup

      She pours her sacred wine.

The mists above the morning rills

      Rise white as wings of prayer;

The altar-curtains of the hills

      Are sunset’s purple air.

The winds with hymns of praise are loud,

      Or low with sobs of pain,—

The thunder-organ of the cloud,

      The dropping tears of rain.

With drooping head and branches crossed

      The twilight forest grieves,

Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost

      From all its sunlit leaves.

The blue sky is the temple’s arch,

      Its transept earth and air,

The music of its starry march

      The chorus of a prayer.

So Nature keeps the reverent frame

      With which her years began,

And all her signs and voices shame

      The prayerless heart of man.