Feature for Earth Month and Poetry Month: Invitations to look up, to seek abundant life

Each year in April, Earth Month and Poetry Month coincide. In each regular issue of Newsline this April, we celebrate God’s good creation and poetry with a special feature. This week we feature some of the biblical poetry that celebrates the creation, preceded by a note from the Earth Day issue of Rooted, the newsletter of the Brethren Creation Care Network (https://mailchi.mp/brethren/rooted-2026-4):

An invitation to look up

Rooted encouraged readers to take a look at “Canopy of Creation: Trees, Faith, and the Work of Justice,” the annual resource from Creation Justice Ministries (www.creationjustice.org/canopyofcreation.html).

The Canopy of Creation, said a description, “is an invitation to look up. It’s an invitation to notice the shade that meets us like mercy on a hot day; to remember the hush of a wooded trail, the steady presence of trunks and branches that outlast our moods and our news cycles.

“Many of us already love trees. We have felt their beauty in our bodies as cool air under leaves, birdsong held in a canopy, the quiet companionship of a living thing that asks nothing from us but attention…. The only members of Creation that show up more often in the Bible than trees are humans.”

An invitation to abundant life

Isaiah 55, from the NRSVue

Hear, everyone who thirsts;
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread
and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live….

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle,
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

———-

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