The Harvest is Plentiful

Isaiah 55:8-11 (NRSV Updated Edition)

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

I grew up in rural central Kentucky in the 1950s. My father yearned to be a full-time farmer but was never able to purchase enough land to support us. Still, we had a large garden of lettuce, onions, radishes, tomatoes, corn, carrots, green beans, and potatoes. We children helped with planting, hoeing, harvesting, preserving, and of course, eating the bounty of this garden. During the long summer months, my mother watched the skies and prayed for rain. I do not remember any summer when we did not have enough rain, even though it did not always come when we wished. But we never went hungry, and we enjoyed the bounty of the garden deep into the winter months as we emptied the canning jars. The harvest was always plentiful.

The United Methodist Social Principles speak directly on our relationship to God’s creation, stating “We affirm that all creation belongs to God and is a manifestation of God’s goodness and providential care. Human beings, nonhuman animals, plants, and other… beings participate in the community of creation, and their flourishing depends on the care of all God’s creation. Rather than treating creation as if it were placed here solely for humanity’s use and consumption, we are called to practice responsible stewardship and to live in right relationship with the Creator and with the whole of God’s creation.”

Recently a farmer in central Kentucky died. His name was Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry dedicated his life to agrarian principles. He owned a small farm and lovingly tended it for seven decades. He believed in the bond between humans and the land, and he advocated for this bond all his life in poetry, essays, and novels. In his essay titled A Native Hill, Berry wrote,

“There appears to be a law that when creatures have reached the level of consciousness, as men have, they must become conscious of the creation; they must learn how they fit into it and what its needs are and what it requires of them, or else pay a terrible penalty: the spirit of the creation will go out of them, and they will become destructive; the very earth will depart from them and go where they cannot follow.”

Like Wendell Berry, all round us in the world today we see the destructive tendencies of mankind. We experience the searing heat of summers and wildfires; we suffer the floods and devastation of storms. Yet we ignore the climate policies we need to enact and we ignore the humans who experience famine. We must return to a relationship with God that includes reverence for our created world.

Let us pray:

Dear God, turn our hearts toward your creation. Help us see that the harvest is plentiful if we work in concert with you to care for the beautiful world you gave us. Amen.

This devotion was written and read by Laura Derr.

Social Principles: Community of All Creation

The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church - 2020/2024

Preface

The great lesson that our blessed Lord inculcates here…is that God is in all things, and that we are to see the Creator in the glass of every creature; that we should use and look upon nothing as separate from God…who pervades and actuates the whole created frame, and is, in a true sense, the soul of the universe (John Wesley, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount").

We affirm that all creation belongs to God and is a manifestation of God’s goodness and providential care. Human beings, nonhuman animals, plants, and other sentient and non-sentient beings participate in the community of creation, and their flourishing depends on the care of all God’s creation. Rather than treating creation as if it were placed here solely for humanity’s use and consumption, we are called to practice responsible stewardship and to live in right relationship with the Creator and with the whole of God’s creation (Gen. 1:26–31; Matt. 6:26–30; Rom. 8:22–24). We are also called to honor the role of every part of creation in healing the whole; thus, we praise God with the whole of creation (Ps. 148) and recognize that we are part of complex ecosystems, all valued by God.

We affirm our sacred calling to be responsible stewards and to lovingly tend all that God has wrought. We recognize the inherent worth of God’s creation, celebrate earth’s abundance and diversity, and, along with the entirety of the cosmos, give praise to its Creator. We recognize we are interconnected members of complex ecosystems, intricate webs of life, all of which have their origins in God’s gracious act of creation.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.