Growing Something New

One of the songs that’s been on my heart since the first spring of this pandemic is, ‘Grown Something New’ by Matt Frazier. We sang it years ago, when I attended an Urbana Convention in college:

Lord, you’re the keeper of what you grow

You water, you guard, for fruit to show

for mercy and justice to flow

You planted the vineyard, our needs you know

 

Grow something new in our lives, oh God

Grow something peaceful, grow something true

Grow something new in our lives, oh God

Grow something new, turn our hope back to you.

 

The song is on my mind again these days, as I bought marigold seeds and biodegradable pots and put them in the prayer room at church for Boston Square and Community Kids folks to pray with and plant.

 

It’s on my mind as I pray for God’s light and life to grow in me and through me.

 

And it’s on my mind, as I sit these words from Catherine of Sienna, a mystic and activist from the 1300s:

 

The sun hears the fields talking about effort

and the sun

smiles,

 

and whispers to

me,

 

“Why don’t the fields just rest, for

I am willing to do

everything

 

to help them

grow?”

 

Rest, my dears,

in Prayer.

 

And with this prayer, from Quaker Isaac Pennington:

Be no more than God has made you.

Give over your own willing;

Give over your own running;

Give over your own desiring to know or to be anything.

Sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart.

Let that grow in you;

be in you;

breathe in you;

act in you;

And you will find, by sweet experience, that the Lord

knows, loves, and owns that and will lead you

to the inheritance of life,

which is God’s portion.

 

Amen.