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Good  morning.

Many of us have felt a sense of disorientation in recent months, detached from familiar pulses and  rhythms in our lives.

Each day this week, a few verses from Psalm 104 are guiding me through the church’s season of creation, which marks our appreciation of the natural world.  The Psalm invites us to consider day and night, times and seasons:

You made the moon to mark the months;
the sun knows the time of its setting.
You spread the darkness, it is night,
and all the beasts of the forest creep forth.

The significance of day and night as part of creation also finds its way into St Francis’s famous Canticle of the Creatures. It seems to me that day and night form the rhythm of life, marking times for rest and work, for celebration and reflection, for play and gathering. The stretch of a day sets limits on our labours and sleep teaches us the vital spiritual discipline of setting down our concerns as sufficient for one day.

We’re also invited to see the bigger patterns of months and seasons, which provide a similar rhythm over a longer stretch of time.  I don’t think we will ever lose the awareness of times of seasons and cycles – they are deep patterns rooted in forces much larger than us. I find that there’s something reassuring about simply letting the rhythms of nature permeate our lives: noticing the daybreak and the last sliver of light in the evening; marking the turn of the year or the first buds of spring; welcoming the great festivals as moments of joy, and gathering to enrich and interrupt the cycles of productivity.

Help us, O God, to find in the rhythms of this new day
the gift of balance and proportion in our lives.
As we greet the dawn, fill us with light and energy
for all that this day will bring.  Amen.