I don’t know about your part of the world, but here in northeastern Kansas the weather is just about perfect. So for my creative prayer practice this week I took some time to appreciate the works of the Creator.

Here’s the basic idea for this practice:

1. Take a walk–around your neighborhood, on a forest path, anywhere you can observe the natural world.
2. Pay attention to the sounds, the colors, the smells, the textures that surround you.  Give thanks to God for the abundant beauty and creativity in the world.
3. Choose one beautiful thing that you can take home with you–either the thing itself or a picture of the thing.
4. Once home, draw or paint a picture of your beautiful thing. The point is not to create a perfect picture, but to really pay attention to one amazing piece of God’s creation. How many different colors are there? What is the shape? The texture? Let your drawing or painting be an act of thanksgiving to God.
5. Select a bible verse that speaks of your beautiful thing–either directly or indirectly. You might choose a verse from Genesis 1 about the day it was first created. Many psalms also speak of various aspects of nature. If no scripture passage comes to mind, you can go to biblegateway.com and do a keyword search.
6. Write the scripture on your picture.

My family went for a walk at the wetlands yesterday. I should be honest and say that it was not the most meditative, spiritually oriented walk I’ve ever taken. There were three kids along. Still, it was amazing. My husband and I were looking for birds and we spotted a red-headed woodpecker, an oriel, and lots of beautiful red-winged blackbirds. I brought home a couple of pieces of reed grass off of the boardwalk.

I created my drawing with colored pencils, wrote the scripture (Genesis 1:11) out with a marker, and shaded in the background with colored chalk.

I hope that you are able to spend some time this week enjoying God’s amazing creations.

*This is also my creation for 30 days of Creativity–Day 3 (my day 14).