abundance – Kate Bluett

The blessings of the Lord will come
as peaches weighing down the boughs
and bushels overwhelmed with plums
in summer days without a cloud,

as sweet as cherries on the stem
whose taste you long for all the year—
You feast on shadows until then
and wait while ripening time draws near,

remembering how the juices run
down chins, and lips and tongues drip joy
enough and more for everyone
in song and summer's feast employed.

That memory in you is wine.
Like summer rain, let it pour down,
distilled from every branch and vine.
You need not turn the world around.

The light will lengthen, fruit grow ripe,
and feast be spread beneath the trees
in days that know no hint of strife,
in peace beside the restful stream.

Though you are winter, spring will come.
Though you are barren, peaches grow.
The Lord will fill your hands with plums
in feasts beyond all you have known.

Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said,
‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person,
harvesting where you did not plant
and gathering where you did not scatter;
so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground.
Here it is back.’
Matthew 25:14-30

Give me the courage now, O Lord,
before you come, before that day,
to dig up what in fear I hoard
and scatter it along my way.

To drag my coins into the light,
to dig up all my buried gold,
before you come, a thief at night:
Give me the courage to be bold,

to take the little that I have
and not to bury but to plant—
to share what I would rather save
and let it fall from open hands.

And if it all should go from me,
if nothing to my hand returns,
then am I in good company,
for you came here with nothing first.

But let it be a mustard seed
that you have planted in my soul:
Oh, let it grow and let it spread
to something better far than gold.

And what I harvest, let me sow
that others may yet gather more,
and let your bounty grow and grow
that all may feast with you, O Lord.

The Parable of the Talents, depicted by artist Andrei Mironov. Oil on canvas, 2013 By Андрей Николаевич Миронов (A.N. Mironov) – Own work, Andrey Mironov See also ticket:2015070410013036http://artmiro.ru/photo/religija_zhanrovaja_kartina/pritcha_o_talantakh/4-0-398, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30528194

Tag: abundance

Peaches

Buried