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Dear Church Family,
What do the changing seasons tell you about life? I recently led a Women’s Retreat and invited our group to do something called Lectio Naturae - sometimes I’ve guided us through Lectio Divina (meaning ‘Divine Reading’) during our Sunday worship services at FPC, and this is similar. Lectio Divina is a way of really letting God speak through scripture to us, without added interpretation or a guided message. It has a time and place, and offers us space to cut out the noise and be thoughtful about what God might be stirring up in us through the Word. In a similar fashion, Lectio Naturae is like a divine reading of nature - going out into nature and attentively observing what God might be communicating to us through His creation. Psalm 19 holds these lines, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” The Palmist recognizes how God’s creation shares a particular testimony and witness to the goodness of God, so this is about us going out, seeing, listening, and paying attention!
At the retreat, it was remarkable how many were struck by the metaphors for life’s journey found in the nature they observed. The creek rushing nearby, which changes the shape of the landscape gradually but permanently. The leaves falling, and how change can be dramatic while also being natural, necessary, and not terrifying. How you never know when the end of something is coming, but God remains faithful through every transition, and how new life is always possible even when we cannot sense it. I wonder what God might show you on a walk this week, or as you look out your window, and observe God’s creation?
Most of the texts we’ll explore this month on Sundays echo this invitation to attentiveness and openness to God shaping our minds through what we see and observe. Most notably, Matthew 25 culminates in a text alerting us to the fact that when we pay close attention especially to the most marginalized and vulnerable among us, with care and compassion, we will actually find ourselves in the presence of God. Do we approach all of God’s creation with such a sense of the sacred? Not only the natural world around us, but in every human being made in the image of God…
May we go about our days attentive to the mysteries of God right in our midst. That we do not get complacent or closed off to the miraculous messages God has written in the trees, leaves, and landscapes around us. And especially that we might not ignore the sacred image of God etched into the people we hardly know, and those struggle to understand. Go in peace, paying attention to the stirring of God’s Spirit, rooted in his word and guided by his light.
Blessings,
Pastor Becca
