Daily Devotions - Monday, March 17

Spring Fever

“I lift up my eyes to the hills — from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
--Psalm 121: 1, 2

Spring Fever keeps calling us—come outside and enjoy the beauty of tulips and daffodils pushing up through the now thawed ground. Hints of springtime are becoming more evident everywhere. The birds are busy readying their houses and you can see the branches of trees telling us that they are eager to bud. The Creator of the heavens and the earth again reminds us that there is a great rhythm at work. In these days where troubles appear to take up too much headline space, we should all take time to be with the one whose springtime powers are again manifest — showing a creative touch more powerful than those who wield words and weapons. Today a prayer by Margueritte Harmon Bro expresses our kinship with creation:

Our Father, we thank thee for Trees!
We thank thee for the trees of our childhood
In whose shade we played and read and dreamed;
For the threes of our schooldays,
The trees along the paths where friendship walked.
We thank thee for special trees
Which will always stand large in our memory
Because for some reason of our own they became our trees.
We thank thee for the great stretches of trees, which make the forests.
May we always stand humbly before thy trees
And draw strength from them as they, in their turn,
Draw sustenance from thy bounties of earth and sun and air.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Ben Keckler
03.17.08