Country Church

*** Revised Common Lectionary *** Lectionary Reading: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 CLASSIC POEM: Country Church Liberty Hyde Bailey In some great day The country church Will find its voice And it will say: I stand in the fields Where the wide earth yields Her bounties of fruit and of grain, Where the furrows turn Till the plowshares burn As they come round and round again; Where the workers pray With their tools all day In the sunshine and shadow and rain.And I bid them tell Of the crops they sell And speak of the work they have done; I speed ev’ry man In his hope and plan And follow his day with the sun; And grasses and trees The birds and the bees I know and I feel ev’ry one. And out of it all As the seasons fall I build my great temple alway; I point to the skies, But my footstone lies In commonplace work of the day; For I preach the worth Of the native earth, – To love and to work is to pray. *** This poem is in the public domain, and may be read in a live-streamed worship service. CONTEMPORARY POEM: Every Hour Here The Innocence Mission We ride our bikes around the circle in the cemetery, weaving. I wave up to You on the Cross. Am I to come upon You suddenly like this forever? Happy, relieved that You are here and I can see You, I can feel You? You are like the ticket-half I find inside the pocket of my old leaf-raking coat. There all the time, all the while, forgotten. I so often seem to leave You in churches and other islands. And on my beads where I can see You, I can feel You. I take the ticket-half and put it on the table, saying, This is God and He’s here through my comings and my goings. But I walk past the ticket-half, I walk past the ticket-half. I walk past the ticket-half just as I’ve walked past the Cross on our wall. Our self-importance grows so dazzling we don’t see You. But Gentle Jesus, aren’t You always, aren’t You every hour here? LISTEN TO THIS SONG: