Image: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, The Martha Jackson Memorial Collection: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, 1980

What if the earth itself could preach? Rev. Rob McPherson explores Alma Thomas’s Earth Sermon: Beauty, Love, and Peace, reflecting on how creation proclaims God’s beauty, love, and peace. Isaiah 55:12–13 and Thomas’s inspiration guide a time of prayerful contemplation, inviting viewers to hear God’s personal word for them today.

Isaiah 55:12-13

Use this guide for prayer and contemplation. Read slowly, pausing as needed for silence and reflection.

Opening

As we prepare for prayer, let your body settle.

Draw in a deep breath—life given by God—and slowly exhale the breath of praise.

Listen.

Reflection on Contemplative Prayer

Today we pray with an abstract painting by Alma Thomas, Earth Sermon: Beauty, Love and Peace.

Let the title itself become a doorway. It is as though the earth is preaching a sermon—bearing witness to the power and necessity of beauty, love, and peace. As you gaze, ask for the grace to receive what creation is saying, beyond what you can explain.

Stay here a moment.

Scripture

Isaiah 55:12–13 (The Inclusive Bible)

And you will go out joyfully and be led out in peace. The mountains and hills before you will break into cries of joy, and all the trees in the countryside will clap their hands. The cypress will grow in place of the thorn bush. The myrtle will replace the briers, and they will stand as a memorial to the Creator—an everlasting sign, never to be destroyed.

Holy Spirit, draw our attention from what we notice to what you are saying to us today. Let the clapping trees and the peace-filled path in this scripture meet us as we look—until our own hearts learn their praise.

Artwork for Prayerful Reflection

Earth Sermon: Beauty, Love and Peace — Alma Thomas

Imagine light filtering through leaves—color arriving as gift, and the white of the canvas shining through.

Listen to these words from Alma Thomas:

“Color is life, or a world without color appears to us as dead. Colors are the children of light, and light is their mother. Light reveals to us the spirit and the living soul of the world through colors. The colors of the rainbow and the northern lights soothe and elevate the soul. The rainbow is accounted as a symbol of peace.”

As you look, let the colors reveal the spirit and elevate your soul.

Reflection Questions

As you gaze at the painting, what do you notice first—color, pattern, white space, movement?

Where do you sense light coming through, as if through leaves, and what kind of joy does that light awaken?

If this painting is an “earth sermon,” what words or themes do you hear in it today?

What does this painting stir in you about beauty—within creation, within others, within your own life?

What does this painting invite you to receive or practice as love right now?

Where do you long for peace, and how does this image name that longing?

As you hold Isaiah’s promise—going out joyfully and being led out in peace—what path opens before you in your imagination?

How is God speaking to you through this painting in this moment?

Why might this message matter for you today, and what changes when you hold it close to your heart?

What is stirring in your soul as you sit with beauty, love, and peace?

Closing

Creator of mountains and hills, of cypress and myrtle, of every tree that claps for joy—speak your word to us. Give us courage to claim what you have shown us, and lead us out in peace. Amen.

“And you will go out joyfully and be led out in peace.” (Isaiah 55:12)