PRAYING HANDS

There are hands that help and comfort,
Hands that plan and teach,
Hands that rest and hands that strive
For a goal just out of reach,
Hands that grasp and hands that give,
Hands that work and play,
Friendly hands and loving hands
That soothes life's cares away.
But praying hands are dearest
In the sight of God above
For in their sweet and earnest clasp
Are reverence and love.
No hands can do an unkind act
Nor cause another care
Nor sin against Our Father's love
When they are clasped in prayer.
Author Unknown

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24

Dear Lord, guide me as I step out the door today. Help me to see all that you have set before me. Lead me down the path of your choosing and shine through me to those that I meet along the way. Amen.

When Autumn flings her banners wide upon October air,
All nature seems to thank its God for making life so fair.
The hills go robed in amethyst, the trees are dressed in fire,
The very air seems thrilling with a passionless desire.
One somehow feels that God on high must love this season best,
He holds it as a mother holds her babe close to her breast.
The pressure of his hand is on all nature like a prayer –
When Autumn flings her banners wide upon October air.
Margaret E. Sangster

Were there no God, we would be in this glorious world with grateful hearts; and no one to thank.
Christina Georgina Rosetti

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted, 14 August 1966

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.
Michelangelo

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
Isaiah 55:10–13

I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.
Alan Hovhaness

Nature is the living, visible garment of God.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The groves were God's first temples.
William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Nature is the art of God.
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1635

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Henry David Thoreau, journal, 5 January 1856

The world is God’s language to us.
Simone Weil

Remain in me, and I will remain in you.
No branch can bear fruit by itself;
it must remain in the vine.
Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches.
If a man remains in me and I in him,
he will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
Albert Einstein

Nature is man’s religious book, with lessons for every day.
Theodore Parker

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.
Martin Luther

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
George Washington Carver

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1599

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
2 Corinthians 9:10

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
St. Bernard

The trees are God's great alphabet:
With them He writes in shining green
Across the world His thoughts serene.
Leonora Speyer

The poetry of the earth is never dead.
John Keats

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.
Alfred Billings Street

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
John Burroughs

Thank you Lord, for the everyday gifts I so often take for granted. Remind me to open my eyes and see your divine touch in all things. Help me to do what I can to communicate your love and paint a rainbow in the lives of those around me. Amen

Truly it may be said that the outside of a mountain is good for the inside of a man.
George Wherry, Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot, 1896

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.
Lydia M. Child

A happy life is not built up of tours abroad and pleasant holidays, but of little clumps of violets noticed by the roadside, hidden away almost so that only those can see them who have God’s peace and love in their hearts; in one long continuous chain of little joys, little whispers from the spiritual world, and little gleams of sunshine on our daily work.
Edward Wilson

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
Helen Keller

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938

One of the hardest lessons we have to learn in this life, and one that many persons never learn, is to see the divine, the celestial, the pure, in the common, the near at hand – to see that heaven lies about us here in this world.
John Burroughs

The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But,
the man did not hear. So the man yelled "God, speak to me" And, the thunder
rolled across the sky. But, the man did not listen. The man looked around
and said, "God, let me see you." And a star shined brightly. But the man did
not notice. And, the man shouted, "God, show me a miracle" and, a life was
born. But, the man did not know. So, the man cried out in despair, "Touch me,
God, and let me know you are here." Whereupon, God reached down and touched
the man. But, the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on. Don't miss
out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way that you expect.
Author Unknown

Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Matthew 6:26

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make music to our God on the harp. He covers the sky with clouds; he supplies the earth with rain and makes grass grow on the hills.
Psalm 147:7–8

Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you.
Luke 12:27-28

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
Thomas Jefferson

To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven, - to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
John Keats, Sonnet XIV

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
J. Lubbock

As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged by a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.
Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping

Once you have heard the lark, known the swish of feet through hill-top grass and smelt the earth made ready for the seed, you are never again going to be fully happy about the cities and towns that man carries like a crippling weight upon his back.
Gwyn Thomas

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Walt Whitman

I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful. Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.
Hamlin Garland, McClure's, February 1899

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
Eleonora Duse

One of the most important – and most neglected – elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us in the creatures of God.
Thomas Merton

Oh, Lord, I thank you for the privilege and gift of living in a world filled with beauty and excitement and variety.

I thank you for the gift of loving and being loved, for the friendliness and understanding and beauty of the animals on the farm and in the forest and marshes, for the green of the trees, the sound of a waterfall, the darting beauty of the trout in the brook.

I thank you for the delights of music and children, of other men’s thoughts and conversation and the books to read by the fireside or in bed with the rain falling on the roof or the snow blowing past outside the window. Amen
Louis Bromfield

Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.
John Muir

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.
Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts, 1858

God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases.
Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.)

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.
Alan C. Kay

If you doubt there is a God, look deep into a rose;
See the velvet petals from the folded bud unclose;
Note the tint and texture and the lovely coloring;
Feel the softness of the petal, breathe the fragrant scent;
Need you waste another thought on further argument?
Here is proof of a Creator: God made manifest;
In this little rose we see divinity expressed.
Patience Strong

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.
Isaiah 2:3

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 1932

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
Dorothy Frances Gurney, "Garden Thoughts"

I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day.
F. Frankfort Moore, A Garden of Peace

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
Hanna Rion

Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.
The Koran

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666

Take thy plastic spade,
It is thy pencil; take thy seeds, thy plants,
They are thy colours.
William Mason, The English Garden, 1782

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
Claude Monet

Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination.
Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thank you, Jessica.)

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant," 1820

There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
Alfred Austin

Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Francis Bacon

If you violate [Nature's] laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.
Luther Burbank

Jesus says, "And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't He more surely care for you?"
Matthew 6:30

Dear Lord, I see your hand, Lord in everything around me. Help me to recognize all that you are sending my way. Amen

To plow is to pray – to plant is to prophesy, and the harvest answers and fulfills.
R. G. Ingersoll

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
Psalm 1:1–3

There is always music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.
Minnie Aumonier

Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company. Only a few love to be alone.
Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau

Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.
John Muir

Trees are your best antiques.
Alexander Smith

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Nelson Henderson

If I knew I should die tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.
Stephen Girard

It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the nation's need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 Arbor Day Message

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
Kahlil Gibran

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
Cree Indian Proverb

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
John Muir

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
James Russell Lowell

Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values.... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.
Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader's Digest, July 1972

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, 1897

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907

God never made his work for man to mend.
John Dryden

In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia.
Charles A. Lindbergh, Life, 22 December 1967

Take care of the earth and she will take care of you.
Author Unknown

The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.
Author Unknown

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir

A lady had recently been baptized. One of her co-workers asked her what it was like to be a Christian. She was caught off guard and didn't know how to answer; but when she looked up, saw a jack-o-lantern on the desk and answered: "It's like being a pumpkin." The co-worker asked her to explain that one. "Well, God picks you from the patch and brings you in and washes off all the dirt on the outside that you got from being around all the other pumpkins. Then he cuts off the top and takes all the yucky stuff out from inside. He removes all those seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then he carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all to see. It is our choice to either stay outside and rot on the vine or come inside and be something new and bright."
Author Unknown

Drop a pebble in the water, and its ripples reach out far; and the sunbeams dancing on them may reflect them to a star.
Give a smile to someone passing, thereby making his morning glad; it may greet you in the evening when your own heart may be sad.
Do a deed of simple kindness; though its end you may not see, it may reach, like widening ripples, down a long eternity.
Joseph Norris

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord His God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them – the Lord, who remains faithful forever.
Psalm 146:5–6

Everywhere I find the signature, the autograph of God, and he will never deny his own handwriting. God hath set his tabernacle in the dewdrop as surely as in the sun. No man can any more create the smallest flower than he could create the greatest world.
Joseph Parker

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
God made their glowing colors,
And made their tiny wings.

The purple headed mountains,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning
That brightens up the sky.

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden:
God made them every one.

God gave us eyes to see them
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who doeth all things well.
Amen
Ceil Francis Alexander 1848

It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of GOD’s design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.
The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so sweetly,
When in my hands they fade and die.
If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of GOD’s design,
Then how can I think I have wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?
So I’ll trust in Him for His leading
Each moment of every day.
I will look to him for His guidance
Each step of the pilgrim way.
The pathway that lies before me,
Only my Heavenly Father knows.
I’ll trust Him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.
Author Unknown

Open your eyes and the whole world is full of God.
Jacob Bohm

I see your hand, Lord, in everything around me,
And in every aspect of my life, I see your will….
I see your plan, Lord, in all the years behind me.
And in the days and years to come, I’ll trust you still.
Jeremiah 29:11

May the road rise up to meet you:
May the wind be always at your back,
The sun shine warm upon your face,
The rain fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the hollow of his hand.
Author Unknown

But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:31

Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands.
Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts
they perform for us in our time of need.
I ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

You go no where by accident.
Wherever you go, God is sending you.
Wherever you are, God has put you there.
He has a purpose in your being there.
Christ who dwells in you has something
He wants to do through you where you are.
Believe this and go in His grace and love and power.
Richard C. Halverson, Chaplain of the United States Senate

O God, help me to touch someone today with my eyes, my words,
my smile, my voice, my laughter, Your word.
Change my life, so I can make a difference.
Let my actions bring someone closer to you.
Help me to make Christmas last all year.
Help me to use my gifts for Jesus.

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