Eternal Seeping Through the Physical

We come into thy house, our home,
once more to give thanks:
for earth and sea and sky in harmony of colour,
the air of the eternal seeping through the physical,
the everlasting glory dipping into time.
We praise Thee.

For nature resplendent:
growing beasts, mergent crops, singing birds,
and all the gayness of the green.
We bless Thee.

For swift running tides, resistant waves, Thy spirit on the waters,
the spirit of the inerrant will,
striving with the currents that are also Thine.
We bless Thee.
O Lord: how marvellous are Thy works.
In majesty hast Thou created them.

As we look on man
we thank Thee above all that Thou hast been mindful of us
in Jesus Christ, our Lord:
that even as a man fell from Thy creation which was good,
so Thou didst send the Proper Man to restore in us the image:
that we find the road to harmony again in Him.

We praise Thee.
Yes: already vibrant with the everlasting,
we are enriched beyond the noblest works of nature.
That the spirit moves upon the turbulent waters of our lives:
We bless Thee.
Yes: that thou dost honour each of us
with a flowing tide and also with resistant waves,
and that the waves only engulf when we lose our trust in Thee:
We give Thee many thanks.
And that even Thou who hast set the stars on their courses
hast also sent each one of us within the orbit of Thy love.
The hairs of our head are numbered.
We give Thee humble praise.

By the awareness of Thy good creation round us,
by the intimations of Thy redemption in us,
by the pulsing sense of Thy spirit round about us and between us—
what else is left for us to do but to say sorry?
For our earthiness and our laziness:
our blindness and forgetting.
What else but to kneel when we see Thee hanging there
 bleeding there, but most certainly risen there
and waiting till we all get together there to take Thee down?
Give us life that we may be penitent.
Penitent that we may live.

--from The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory: Iona Prayers, ed. by George MacLeod