SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 2025 - 'GREAT ARE YOUR WORKS'
September 21, 2025
Deborah Laforet
“Great Are Your Works”
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by your
Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
Often when people are asked where they find or experience God or the Holy, they answer, “In
nature.” There is something about being at the top of a mountain, looking out at the expanse of a large
body of water, connecting with a pet, spring time flowers or fall colours, a powerful storm, or the day
after a large amount of snow has dropped- there is something that makes people stop in awe and wonder.
No matter how often we’ve experienced these events, or how much we’ve studied scientific
explanations, the mystery of nature can take our breath away.
Do you have an experience you want to share, when you have felt wonder, and mystery, and a
connection with the Holy?
I am impressed by the majesty of mountains, a beautiful sunset, or a star filled sky, but many of
my connections to the Holy through nature are through ordinary moments, like laying in my hammock,
looking up at the trees above me and listening to the wind blow through the leaves and the branches -
nature’s music.
Many find the only way to express what they feel about nature is through art - through poems,
songs, dance, or visual arts, and they’ve been doing this since humans first started to paint on caves and
first sat around a roaring fire. People have been singing songs, painting, and writing poems in praise of
God’s creation and the wonder of nature for eons. We heard one of those poems from thousands of years
ago, a psalm in our bible.
“You clothe yourself with light like a garment. You spread the heavens like a tent... You make
the clouds your chariot, and ride on the wings of the wind...You cover the earth with the ocean as with a
cloak...O God, how manifold are your works!
Throughout the centuries, we hear people using images of nature. Shakespeare used nature in a
poem of comparison: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” William Blake wrote a poem in which
he talked to the tiger, struggling with its existence as a mighty predator:
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
And William Wordsworth as he walked through a field of daffodils:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
In our modern world, we hear a lot of images through our pop music. I’m sure many will come
to mind. Here are a few that came to mine. “Ain’t no mountain high enough; ain’t no valley low
enough, ain’t no river wide enough, to keep me from getting to you, love.” “I see trees of green, red
roses too. I see them bloom, for me and you,” “Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue.”
And of course, the wonderful nature images of John Denver.
You fill up my senses, like a night in a forest.
Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain
Like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean
You fill up my senses, come fill me again.
Nature moves us - moves us to tears, moves us to song, moves us to question, moves us to study
and research, moves us so much that we can’t help but feel there is something sacred - Holy Mystery,
Holy Majesty, Holy Beauty - something that connects us as one created universe.
As we live in this world, as created beings and as creators, surrounded by a variety of life, and
the wonders of its diversity, order, mathematical equations and scientific discoveries that blow the mind,
we can’t help but create art to express all that we see, hear, smell, taste, touch - all that we feel - the
wonder and the majesty, the fear and the might, the awesomeness and the beauty.
May you go home today with songs playing in your head of nature. May you experience the
world’s wonder, it’s mystery, and it’s beauty, and may you connect with all that is Holy, with Christ,
cosmic and universal, and the Spirit, which moves us to be one with all God has created, knowing it is
all very good. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Genesis 1:6-8 & Psalm 33:6-9
(Introduce yourself.)
Today, I am continuing a reading from the first creation story in our bible. Today we are
on the Third Day. I am reading from Genesis 1, verses 9 to 13. Notice the continued
pattern of God said, God called, and God saw, and God's acknowledgement that it’s all
good, which we hear twice on day three.
And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let
the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that
were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said,
“Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on
earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth
vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with
the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was
morning, the third day.
Now, we’re going to do a responsive reading of Psalm 104. It will be projected, but you
can also follow along in your hymn books, on page 826. On the screen, my part is in
yellow and yours is in white. On the page, you will read the part in bold. Where you see
the capital letter ‘R,’, we’ll sing Refrain 1. Catherine will first play the refrain for us a
couple of times.
Read from the Voices United on pages 826-827.
May the Spirit guide our understanding of this sacred scripture. Amen.