The Rabbit Room

In anticipation of the full arrival of spring, here’s a liturgy from Every Moment Holy, Vol. 1 for those of us who are contemplating what we should grow in our gardens this year. Download the liturgy at EveryMomentHoly.com/liturgies or in the Every Moment Holy app.

A Liturgy for Gardening

Leader: O Creator who calls forth life,
May this ground, and our labors
here invested, yield good provision for
the nourishing of both body and soul.

People: Lord, let our labors in this garden
be fruitful. Lord, let our labors in this
garden be blessed.

As we work the soil of this garden plot,
furrowing, planting, watering, and harvesting
may such acts become to us a living parable,
a prayer acted out rather than spoken.

Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.

As we co-labor with you
and with your creation
to produce a beneficial harvest, may we
find in such toil a kind of rest. May this plot
of ground become a hallowed space and
these hours a sacred time for reflection,
for conversation with friends and family,
and for fellowship with you, our Creator.

Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.

Through our tending of these
your delightful creations—
vegetables and fruits,
beans and berries,
vines and stalks
and roots and flowers—
renew our own tired hopes,
redeem our own wearied imaginations.
As we cultivate gentle order,
training,
pruning,
weeding,
and protecting,
so cultivate and train our wayward hearts,
O Lord, that rooted in you
the forms of our lives might spread
in winsome witness, maturing to bear
the good fruit of grace, expressed in
acts of compassionate love.

Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.

Walk with us now, O Lord,
in the stillness of this tilled and quiet space,
that when we venture again into the still
greater garden of your world, we might be
prepared by the long practice of your presence,
to offer our lives as a true and nourishing
provision to all who hunger for
mercy
and hope
and meaning,
a true and nourishing provision
to all who hunger for you.

Lord, let our labors in this garden be fruitful.
Lord, let our labors in this garden be blessed.

Amen.

Click here to download this liturgy at EveryMomentHoly.com/liturgies.

And click here to view Every Moment Holy in the Rabbit Room Store.