A Liturgy for Restoring a Heart of Generosity

O God of abundance,
do You see the depth
of our human need
and how, in the face of it,
our hearts have atrophied?

We have the news always
at our fingertips, and so we see
the sorrows of this world—
children playing games
in war-torn streets, their mothers
striving hard to find them food
to eat, a safe place to sleep, while
wildfires burn through the homes
of the elderly and floods wash away
neighborhoods and communities;
people being made to excavate
their lives from rubble and mud,
donning hazmat suits to sift through
the ashes of what was,
unsure of what’s to come.

What human heart
can hold all this?

Is it a wonder that to cope
we, preemptively, wrap our hearts
in grave clothes or shield our eyes
with the blinding light of screens,
numbing our feelings and our fears
with pixelated images of other
people’s lives just far enough
removed that there’s no need
to call them brother, sister,
neighbor, friend?

But, what if, like chestnuts
collected from the forest floor
and kept in glass bowls
on coffee tables
to save them from decay,
our hearts, if left inert,
collapse inward, never feeling
the freedom of having been
cracked open to new life by You?

We would forfeit
the generative possibilities
of entrusting all we have
to the Maker of all Matter,
in whose upside-down
economy it is more blessed
to give than to receive,
and in whose calloused, world-worn
hands our simple offerings
are multiplied to meet the needs
of more fellow image-bearers
than we could ever reach
when we try to give while also
worrying that the murmurings
and rumors delivered to our feeds
by faceless algorithms
bear some truth—that in reality
we’re living in a land of scarcity
and giving anything will lead
to our diminishing.

Creator God, who packed the life
of a magnolia tree into
the small, red seeds
that we can hold by the dozen
in the palms of our hands,

teach us through
the unfurling of spring
in constellations hung
on the branches of trees,

that although these
soft-petaled stars
in pale pinks and creams
burn brightly for a moment,
their fleeting glimpse of fullness
fading out to flowers, brown
around the edges, curling inward,
falling to the ground,

what looks like a definitive
diminishing is only a beginning;
the flowers, having done
their job—submitting
to the severing, making way
for fruit to form—give life
to hundreds, thousands more,
multiplying beauty exponentially.

God, help us lean into the mystery
of life that comes from dying seeds;
restore in us Your expansive
heart of generosity.

Amen

Luke 6:38  |  Acts 20:35  |  1 Corinthians 9:10  |  Ephesians 1:3-6

The featured image is courtesy of Ariel Lovewell and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.

Bethany Colas

Bethany Colas is a poet, military spouse, and mom of three who writes about God’s grace in the ordinary wonders of daily life and the tender sorrows and joys of parenthood. In addition to writing poems for services at her church and participating in Pass the Piece collaborations with other artists, her poems have been published in Ekstasis Magazine. 

She currently resides in the suburbs of Connecticut with her family and their yellow Labrador, Lemon. When she’s not reading mystery novels from the Golden Age era or writing poetry in the margins of her days, she can be found assisting her eldest daughter with last-minute baking projects, learning soccer skills from her youngest son, patiently listening to her middle daughter campaign for another dog, and drinking vats of tea to sustain her through it all. 

You can find more of her writing at her website.

bethanycolas.wixsite.com/notetoself