Daily Worship

Scene: Wild heather on a hillside

James Cathcart September 01, 2025 1 0
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Image credit: Unsplash
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Psalm 81:1, 10-16 (NIVUK)

1 

Sing for joy to God our strength;
    shout aloud to the God of Jacob!

 

10 

I am the Lord your God,
    who brought you up out of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.

11 

‘But my people would not listen to me;
    Israel would not submit to me.

12 

So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts
    to follow their own devices.

13 

‘If my people would only listen to me,
    if Israel would only follow my ways,

14 

how quickly I would subdue their enemies
    and turn my hand against their foes!

15 

Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him,
    and their punishment would last for ever.

16 

But you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
    with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.’

It’s a scene of wild grace. Purple flowers tenaciously hanging on to bunched, rough, crooked stems. Slashes of purple on forbidding hills, growing belligerently, indifferent to the weather. Berry bursts of colour in the bleakness of this manmade wilderness. But there is honey here, gold spun from these wild plants in this hard place. There is unimaginable sweetness. Fragrant, powerful; an alabaster jar waiting to break open.

Wild honey, wild grace for a wild people on this wild earth. 

 

Prayer:

 

Lead us

like bees

to the flowers that connect everything

and help us to love the bees into survival

to love them into thriving,

those bees

who love the flowers

that connect us to everything.

Amen.