An Reflection from Pastor Barbara L. Stumpf

Welcome to Deer Creek Harmony Presbyterian Church and to "Meeting God on the Ground," an exhibit of nature-themed art giving thanks for God’s good creation and celebrating Earth Day. This exhibit continues Deer Creek Harmony’s efforts to bring gifts and insights from the various arts – visual, musical, literary, and lively – to our calling as followers of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus used parables to tease people’s minds to fresh ways of seeing and thinking, so we at Deer Creek Harmony are discovering the arts to be powerful agents for healing and social change.

The work of the artist is not unlike that of the spiritual pilgrim – each cultivates a dual vision. By nature and vocation, artists look long and hard at what they bring into being.

Whether the ultimate work be a poem, a painting, a sermon, or a song, the artist attends both to the inner urgency that impels him or her to create and to the outer stimulus that inspires the artistic engagement. This is very like the inward/outward movements of the spiritual life. We learn to slow down, listen for God’s voice, and look for God’s hand among the babble and clutter of our everyday lives. At the same time, we gain awareness of the self to whom God is speaking. In the process, we become more sensitive interpreters of our own responses as well as more careful and sympathetic observers of the world.

Above all, the arts teach us gratitude, wonder, and compassion. We marvel at the intricate veining of a leaf, the diversity of beetle and brown bear. We notice hidden likenesses in things that seemed disparate, and connectedness where we thought there was isolation. We learn to see beauty in the stranger, pain beneath posturing, need in the midst of plenty. We become more receptive to new solutions to the urgent problems of our day as well as more attuned to how God is already at work in the world. And we give thanks as awareness dawns that indeed we are written on the palms of the hands of a loving Creator. (Isa 49:16)

It is fitting that this exhibit occurs not only in springtime but in Eastertide. In this season Christians everywhere celebrate the risen Christ, who makes all things new and who commissions his followers to the work of renewal in his name. For Christians, Jesus is "God on the Ground," Emmanuel, God-with-us. God is not only "up there" in heaven but dwells among us. For people of faith, Earth Day and Eastertide combine to remind us that we are called to love what God loves. This is God’s world; we are called to cherish it.

As you stroll through gallery and sanctuary, we hope this exhibit will give you an opportunity to exercise your muscles of discernment and delight. Even more, we hope that the time you spend "Meeting God on the Ground" will increase your passion to say, in your own way:

"May I see the face of Christ in all creation, And may each creature see in me the face of a friend."

Sunday Services 11am           Rt 161 at Harmony Church Road     Darlington, Maryland    21034