Trees Archives - Prayer matters

Leave your tree

Benediction

God is the rock to which you cling,
            your hiding place.
      This doesn’t mean that now you should go
            where no one can find you.
Instead, this week, I invite you:
            come down out of your own sycamore tree.
      Jesus is coming to your home,
            to where you work
                  or learn
                        or play.
Don’t be afraid. It’ll be all right.
      Today salvation has come to this house,
            because you too are a son or daughter
                  of Abraham and Sarah.

~ from Long Green Valley Church of the Brethren, posted on re:worship

This week’s post was inspired by an article in The Guardian featuring photographs of women posing in trees, a recurring theme in amateur photographs taken between the 1920s and 1950s.

Tree of beauty

Hymn

87 87 87

Faithful cross, O tree of beauty,
tree of Eden, tree divine!
Not a grove on earth can show us
leaf and flow’r and fruit so fine.
Bearer of our Savior’s body,
tree of life, salvation’s sign!

Cross of pain transformed to gladness
ever green and sheltering tree,
symbol once of shame and bondage,
now the sign that we are free!
Cross of splendor, cross of glory,
cross of love’s great victory!

Christians, chant your grateful praises
for the tree of triumph won,
proof of overflowing mercy
and redemption in the Son.
To the cross of Christ give glory
while the endless ages run!

by Delores Dufner, sourced from Treasures Old and New: Images in the lectionary by Gail Ramshaw, p. 394

From the blog
In the school of prayer with Eugene Peterson
In the school of prayer with Michael Mayne
In the school of prayer with Brother Lawrence

Trees of healing

I saw a tree that was growing on each side of the river. It is the tree that gives people true life. It has 12 different kinds of fruit, a new fruit every month. The tree’s leaves are like medicine. They make people of every nation well again.

Revelation 22:2 (EASY)

A prayer for wholeness

We grieve and confess
that we hurt and have been hurt,
to the third and fourth generations,
that we are so afraid of pain
that we shield ourselves from being vulnerable to others,
and refuse to be open and trusting as a child …

O God of Wholeness, we rest in you …
You listen with us to the sound of running water,
you sit with us under the shade of the trees of our healing,
you walk once more with us in the garden in the cool of the day,
the oil of your anointing penetrates the cells of our being,
the warmth of your hands steadies us and gives us courage.
O God of Wholeness, we rest in you …

by Jim Cotter
from The Book of a Thousand Prayers by Angela Ashwin, #349

From the blog
Settle yourself into the quiet
In the school of prayer with Terry Hinks
Theme: He heals the brokenhearted [prayer sheet]