Monday
Genesis 1.11-12 – “Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so….And God saw that it was good.”
The first mention of trees in the Bible, “bearing fruit and seed according to their kind.” Trees are good, and they are good for us, and for the whole planet. Shade from the sun, soil stability for the land in flood, fruit to eat, and as filters for our air. Early in our human story trees were amongst God’s good blessings. They still are.
Tuesday
Genesis 2.16-17 – “And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Innocence and guilt, right and wrong. We live with these inner judgements every day. But our all too human hearts claim the right to be free, and that freedom can be used for good or evil. The knowledge of good and evil is only possible when we know both, make choices, and have done both. And so sin is born. To turn away from God who is the source of life is fatal, a choice against life.
Wednesday
Psalm 1.2-3 –Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.”
To spend time enjoying God’s company, meditating on the love of God in Christ. We all know the importance of irrigation for plants and trees. Irrigate your soul, take time to be rooted near the river of life, with its various tributaries – the Scriptures, thanksgiving, worship. We’ve all seen plants dying for water, wilted and withering – fill the watering can, do some self-irrigation!
Thursday
Psalm 92.12-15 – The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
Just as in Psalm 1, the tree is a symbol of a life rightly lived, rooted in God and lived in glad obedience. One of the features of a tree is its rootedness and stability. The life lived rightly in Christ is anchored in the steadfast love and enduring faithfulness of God. Good fruit and green leaves just keep coming to those who are “planted in the house of the Lord.” The Lord is upright, and his word is Rock-solid!
Friday
Psalm 96.11-13 – “Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.”
Judgement and justice lie at the heart of God’s purposes and ways in the world. When justice is done the whole creation rejoices. Think of a forest as a choir, the wind of God blowing through it, the trees moving in rhythm to the sounds of branches playing. Come on! Use your imagination – thank God for the promise of his presence now, and the promise of his coming in due time to make the world right.
Saturday
Isaiah 55.12 – “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”
These are words to a people going home, free from exile, returning to the place of worship and thanksgiving. Singing mountains and hand-clapping trees – you need some imaginations to think that up! This is the applause of God’s creation, the joy of the redeemed singing songs of freedom. Sometimes, the praise we pray and sing to our Lord just needs a good dose of exuberance. Come on, says Isaiah, join hands with the trees, and dance to the music of the mountains! You’re part of God’s plan!
Sunday
Proverbs 11.30 – “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and the wise gathers lives.”
A life well lived brings life and goodness to the whole community. When people act with mercy, justice, and kindness because they love and trust God, there is a ripple effect throughout a neighbourhood. Indeed, to have the reputation of someone well known for caring for others, is one of the best ways to witness to the love of God in Christ. People tend to want to be around those whose lives speak in actions, behaviour, attitudes and words that are encouraging, affirming and on the side of life. “Lord, root us deep in your love, as trees of life, bearing the fruits of compassion for others, and gathering the lives of others into the circle of your love.”
Something important is being said when the felling of a single tree makes national and international headlines. The loss of the landmark tree at Sycamore Gap that had stood for more than two hundred years, means that, for once the word ‘shocking’ is not an overstatement. That tree had been a trysting place, a walkers’ landmark, a place of solace, a photographer’s dream place, a silhouette of joy against a night sky.
Whatever the motives of those who cut it down, that sycamore was a symbol, its deep rootedness and familiar always-there presence, a focus for human hopes and longings, a safe place for people to sit. And before we dismiss those deep ties of human affection for trees, it might be wise to consider how much we need signs of permanence on our landscapes, and the healing power of nature’s recurring seasons of growth and rest, of harvest times and fruit.
The Bible speaks of trees that have leaves for the healing of the nations. Another text sings of freedom and the applause of God’s creation when ‘the trees of the field will clap their hands’. And it was in the thick foliage of a sycamore tree that Zacchaeus was hiding when Jesus passed by and spotted him, and made a point of being a friend to someone most other people hated.
Trees are signs and places of blessing. They are important reminders that life isn’t all about machines and technology, and life goals need more than more money or endless selfies to satisfy. Life needs roots, to enable us to bear the good fruit of our years. Trees are nature’s long term investments, visual aids of what happens when life flourishes. That’s why we should cherish them.
Photo: Two trees near Guite Castle, Aberdeenshire.
This book used to belong to Gordon S Wakefield. Gordon was one of a generation of Methodist scholars whose grasp of the history of Christian spirituality was broad and deep. I once spent a while with him over several days at a conference on Evangelical Spirituality, not long after his book on John Bunyan was published. We sat together a few times and talked about Evangelical spirituality and the comparative neglect of a large and influential tributary of the great river of Christian traditions. He was a lovely, gentle and sharp thinking man, and I'm so glad to own one of the books he owned and read.
But the book on Wesley is also important to me because I had read it while on a sabbatical break at St Deiniols Library, and was later delighted to find one second-hand. I'm reading it again as part of a larger study of affective theology, exploring the relations between Word and Spirit in the Christian's experience of divine initiative and activity, and human responsiveness in love and gratitude, in the inner renewal of the person before God.
What's fascinating in this book is the comparison of Puritan theology and piety and Wesleyan theology and spirituality. The Puritan influence on Wesley goes back to his mother Susannah. By the time he was editing his Christian Library he was ransacking many of the most popular Puritan works, editing and theologically re-shaping them, and making those chosen doctrinally curated texts available for the edification of those converted and continuing within the Methodist churches and societies. Wesley was expert in the art of precis and abridgement; he was also ruthless in excluding that which seemed to him doctrinally erroneous or practically unhelpful.
Monk's explanation of what Wesley was about is transparently honest: "A theologian's own allegiances — his interests and interpretations — serve to concentrate his attention on those elements of another man's writings which he considers important and to eliminate those aspects which he may consider erroneous or extraneous."
Wesley's theology was largely anti-Calvinist, whole-hearetedly embracing Arminian views of salvation, sanctification and election, and these often expressed polemically in sermons, letters, tracts and with particular polemical edge in Charles' hymns. The Puritans on the other hand were largely Calvinist in theology and considerably more restrictive in their understanding of the scope of salvation and the nature of the atonement.
John Wesley has been described as one whose spirituality reveals a 'devout eclecticism'; a less generous phrase may be to say Wesley was skilled at cherry-picking the best fruit from Christian theologians, ignoring or eliminating what did not meet his own Arminian leaning theological criteria. All of this is explored in Monk's book,which has done great service in explaining how the shelf life of many Calvinist Puritan works was extended, albeit by a method of theological cut-and-paste that would have scandalised the original authors.
My own interest in Wesley and the Puritans is quite specific. I'm currently engaged in a study of Richard Sibbes the Puritan, and looking for those places in the later traditions where Sibbes voice is heard, either as clearly articulated or as familiar echo. Reading some of Sibbes' writings on God's love, the mystery of grace, the intimacy of union with Christ, the work of the Spirit in justification and sanctification, it is hard to avoid the impression of similar sentiments and theological emphases in the verses of The Hymn Book for the People Called Methodists. We'll see, that's an evenue still to be explored.
Prayer of Intercession for Our World
Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be your name.
God of Wisdom, quite often these days, we don’t know what to pray or how to begin to make sense of the way the world is.
If we used as our prayer list the news headlines, or our news feeds, or the rapid fire crises lighting up social media, it would take forever to pray for all that worries us, or moves us to compassion, or makes us angry.
Forgive us when we give up and when the messiness of our world so gets us down, that praying for the world is the last thing we think of.
Eternal God, yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory. In the radiating light of the risen Christ, help us to pray by standing on that rock solid confession, Your will be done.
Response: “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
God of the nations, all over the world millions of people are on the move. Those seeking asylum from persecution and danger to life, refugees fleeing war and disasters of flood, earthquake, and drought. In seeking to offer help and refuge wherever it is needed, Your will be done
Response: “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Creator God, where your world is being wasted by stripped forests, polluted waters, destroyed habitats of people and creatures, the silencing of birdsong and depletion of our oceans, help us to find the know-how and the political will to change things back towards flourishing, justice and hopefulness. Your will be done.
Response: “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Generous God of Love, the cost of living crisis means so many things – hunger and no food, cold and not enough heating, loneliness and few friends, anxiety about how to make ends meet, fear for our children’s future and our own as we grow older. Lord persuade our hearts away from the possessive pronoun mine, and towards the shared pronoun our. Your will be done.
Response: “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
God of all hope, as we pray for the world, its wealth and all its peoples, teach us to live wisely and generously. By your grace enable us to behave and act with determined faithfulness to follow Jesus; by your Spirit give us words and passions to pray prayers of defiant trust; fire our imagination to think up new things and perform here in our place, gestures of decisive hopefulness.
Response: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, for Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, forever, AMEN.
Five panels explore in colour and symbol the meaning of Shalom as expressed in 5 Psalms. (Psalm 1, 8, 104, 23, 121) The tapestry began by working the letters to make the word, and then each panel from the bottom up, one panel at a time over three months.
Over that time these Psalms were read, or listened to where music was available. The entire tapestry was worked and completed during a very difficult time when solace and inner re-orientation was sought in creativity and contemplative dwelling with familiar texts.
From the bottom, Psalm 121 is about hills, pilgrimage and therefore new horizons. There is a Scottish tint to some of the hills in the background while those nearer are more verdant, and one ready for harvest. Shalom is about that combination of moving forward and yet having a sense of wellbeing and stability.
Psalm 23 is perhaps the least successful of the panels. It echoes green pastures, still waters, the fruitfulness of creation which provides for the spread table and the sense of goodness and mercy’ the left rear field has harvest sheaves and on the horizon fruit trees. The dark valley (grey) and the path of righteousness (blue mix) which climbs to the top of the letter, are separated by a yellow shape which began to look like a chalice – so the wine pouring out seemed a good idea – the cup overflows. Shalom is richly suggested in every verse of Ps 23.
Psalm 104 is a celebration of the majesty and splendour of God and Creation as the expression of God’s creative joy and unfathomable power. At the bottom of the middle panel are the bricks of the earth’s foundations (ancient cosmology viewed a three storey universe). The bricks hold the waters of the sea which are filled by rivers and streams from the snow-capped mountains. Calvin spoke of nature as the theatre of God’s glory, and thus the red curtains open onto the world stage and the backlight is the ineffable and dazzling glory of God. Shalom is to look on the world through the eyes of a wise, generous, Creator whose power is both incomprehensible, and incomprehensibly for us.
Psalm 8 is a night Psalm and the combination of light and shadow, of stars against a night sky with a full moon, of water reflecting light and of the small human dwelling at the edge of mountains, forest and lake, all of these help to hear the question, “What are human beings that you care for us?” The trust that God does so care is an essential of shalom
Psalm 1 is the most structured of the panels, and the one which other people like most! My own favourite is the middle panel on psalm 104. The orderly stitching suggests the ordered life, focused on Torah, the words and Word of God. The trees and their fruitfulness against a blue sky point to a life that is settled, fruitful, ordered and guided by God. Obedience is love for God lived and enacted with gladness of spirit.
The panel is surrounded by rainbow colours, with Heaven above and Sheol beneath, but both surrounded and held by the rainbow mercy of God. This was the first tapestry for a long time in which I varied the stitches, and the first which I started without any clear idea where it was going or how it might look when finished. It is a study in colour, symbol and imagination of very familiar texts – I don’t know whether its richness can be communicated and assimilated by others. For me it was the outworking of inner prayer at a troubled time.