Eyes on the Prize

[It is] a land that the Lord your God looks after. The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. – Deuteronomy 11:12 (NRSV) 

For the last 13 months, our congregation has been on a pilgrimage … back to our own sanctuary. We are tracing the Chicago Outer Belt, a 210-mile trail that loops most of the city and many of its suburbs. 

We walk 10 miles at a time, through beautiful forests and ugly industrial corridors, across snowy winter fields and alongside swollen spring rivers, praying for it all. Our goal is to ring our city in blessing. Which I felt pretty proud of. Until I found out people have been doing it for centuries. 

Today, in the UK, it’s Rogation Sunday, a tradition that dates to the Middle Ages, in which congregations get outside and “beat the bounds,” tracing the parish limits. They pray for the crops and the livestock. They pass on ancestral knowledge of place. 

And, according to Deuteronomy, they train their eyes to see what God never loses sight of: the beauty and goodness of the world they’ve created. The particular blessings of the spots which are ours to pray for. 

Run your eyes over yours today. Take a 10-mile walk. Roll around the block. Scan the four corners of the room. Pray for the plants and animals that inhabit it. And know that wherever your eyes fall, God’s are already on it, watching over from the beginning of the year to its end. From the start of your journey, along whatever path you trace, until you arrive all the way back home. 

Prayer
Teach me to love this place.