Sermon for Rogation Tuesday
“Behold, it was very good.”
The Genesis statement about the created world is the counter to so many of our fears and uncertainties. It is the strong reminder of the essential goodness of the material world as created by God and as such exists for God. Rogationtide would remind us of this fundamental truth. The world is God’s world and exists for his glory. And so do we.
Prayer and labour are thus intimately connected. When we see our labours as works of prayer then we are looking at the world in an entirely new and wonderful way. We see something of the grandeur of God in the beauty of the earth, something of the grandeur of God in the lives of one another. We are freed from the prosaic and dreary burdens of our endless manipulation of the world, as if it existed for us and not for God.
What then is our labour? Is it not about working with the world of seed-time and harvest so as to reap the fruits of nature and of human labour? Yes. But that is to work with the world as God’s world and to see our labours as prayer and praise.