WESTMINSTER WOODS WRAP-UP
Wednesday morning, June 27
My devotional time this morning was spent drawing only. I put together a composite picture of the jobs we accomplished as well as a few natural momentos along the way: the western tanager, the mushrooms we found, the wildflowers, etc.
Tree Greed
Tuesday afternoon, June 26
Luke 12:15 (The
Message)
“Take care! Protect yourself against the least
bit of greed. Life is not defined by
what you have, even when you have a lot.”
We completed the
last of our tasks this afternoon around 2pm in a pouring rain, and decided to
take the time for Devotions then so Katy and Will could head back to Baker
City. The text from Luke was the basis
for our discussion and the writing of the Benediction, our Sermon segments, and
selection of the final hymn.
This passage from
Luke, a parable often not shared, reminds us that material “stuff” can
overwhelm us. When is enough too
much? When does caring for your family
become hoarding and greed? In tying the morning to this afternoon, I thought
that our possessions sometimes become so overwhelming that they crowd out God
in our life. The trees of our soul can’t
thrive when they are squeezed out by secular ‘things’. We need to manage our life like a forest,
constantly trimming and thinning to keep the priorities straight, and to
provide room for our spiritual self to thrive.
We must share our wealth, our gifts, our talents with those around us –
in so doing, we shall continue to be richly blessed. When we get greedy and begin to hoard, much
could be taken from us. What have I
failed to share? How can I better thin
the forest of my heart? What am I
holding onto too tightly, and thereby preventing God from entering? Much to consider when thinning trees!
Pruning Creation
Tuesday morning, June
26, 2012
John 15: 1-4
“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the
Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me
that doesn’t bear grapes. And every
branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I
have spoken.”
Dale Wilkins presented an extended session this morning on
the purpose and practice of thinning the forests for health and
productivity. Where the trees are thick
and crowded, they eventually must self-prune or face destruction through fire,
disease, etc. The Woods are working hard
to manage this forest in a healthy way, to allow the native plants and
vegetation to thrive. Fire loves an
overcrowded forest which allows the crown fire to flourish. Due to the steady
rainfall, we will not be able to complete the thinning and trimming of the fir
trees that Dale had hoped to have us do.
However, we did completely clean the chapel and wash the windows. Rick and I worked outside in the rain,
weeding the front of the chapel around the ground cover. Since we must have pulled up nearly a hundred
6” fir seedlings, we have thinned and pruned!!
Creation Exploitation
Monday evening, June 25, 2012
Matthew 4:8-11
“The devil took Jesus to the peak of a high
mountain. He gestured expansively,
pointing out all the earth’s kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, ‘They’re all yours – lock,
stock, and barrel. Just go down on your
knees and worship me, and they’re yours.”
The Devil is offering Jesus everything –
all the glory and riches of Creation.
With just one little catch – ‘Worship me, not God.’ And Jesus firmly balks.
How often is our world tempted by the
richness of creation, tempted to abuse and exploit the natural resources for
personal gain? Creation is God’s gift to us, we are a part of it. When we destroy, we are throwing the gift
away, throwing it back in God’s face so to speak. We are denying God. But we are also denying our integral place
within that Creation, and hence destroying ourselves. Part of the mission of Westminster Woods is
to protect and tend this 66 acres of God’s world, to develop and nurture the
land in a sustainable manner and not exploit the richness of its history or
resources. Our work here, in a small
way, helps the Woods continue that mission.
Monday night we wrote the Confession and
Assurance of Pardon based on this text.
Open to God
Monday morning, June 25, 2012
2 Corinthians
6:11-13 (The Message)
“I can’t tell you how much I long for you to
enter the wide open, spacious life. We
didn’t fence you in. The smallness you
feel comes from within you. Your lives
aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way… Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!”
You can’t help
but feel wide open and expansive when you stand amidst God’s creation and
behold the vast skies at night or the multi-layers of hill upon hill in the
distance. You can feel open to God in
such a setting. But we often close
ourselves off to God, living in the narrow confines of our day to day
routine. Today I shall seek at least one
way to “open up” to all God has to offer me as I work side by side with church
family here at Westminster Woods.
Creation Care
Sunday evening, June
24:
Genesis 1:26-31
“God blessed them: ‘Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take
charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every
living thing that moves on the face of the Earth.”
The NRSV we used
for the devotion reading says “subdue the earth” and we found that one term
really bothered all the group as we considered Creation Care. I MUCH prefer Peterson’s use of “Be
responsible”. God has blessed us with a
world of incredible abundance and beauty.
It is our responsibility to take care of it: to tend and till, to
prosper ourselves but also prosper creation.
We haven’t always done this well as a world. As a group tonight we wrote Sunday’s Call to
Worship and selected the opening hymn.
