Prayer for Creation

Kate Buckley is GIPL's Outreach Coordinator for Coastal Georgia. Here she shares a prayer and revelation that came to her in the garden ...It came to me last week when I was praying. It’s sort of unusual for me to really sit down and pray; I generally pray by experience – I pause to gape at the beauty of nature, I hear about some awful tragedy or the pain of a friend and offer a deep sigh and a few words to God, I sit on the couch with my heart so full it could burst when my toddlers blow me away with their dialogue to each other. But rarely do I sit down, head bowed, and pray for something very specific.But it came to me when I was outside in the garden praying for the world. It felt like a really big thing to pray for, and I honestly didn’t know where to start. So I started by writing down what I heard outside:Your Creation is:Wind rustling through branchesSun bathing my neckThe click click of Sunday high heelsLaughter spilling out of the hallwayThe beeping of car key remotesThe smell of earth mixing with waves of coffee and baconThe birds singing and tweeting and flappingGood intentions radiating out from us,Horribly unaware that beneath this symphony—There is groaning; groaning we have caused.And then came the epiphany. We are grumbling in the wilderness; hungry and angry. We are lost. We cannot seem to figure out how to ration the morning manna; we hoard it and the stench of our greed sticks to the very ground we trample.  Until we learn the art of taking only what we need from our God each morning, we will continue in this holding pattern – exiled from real community and the Promised Land.The part of “this work,” that is, of prophetically speaking about our call for Creation as Christian people, of provoking the need for change, of inciting hope despite the realities of a broken earth… the part of “this work” that is the most challenging to me lies in my ability (or inability) to articulate science. There are others who are far more equipped to talk statistics; to draw out the temperature change charts, the natural disaster trends, the gross results of pollution, coal-powered plants, overfishing and shrimping our oceans.The part of “this work” that I love comes only after someone comes in and crushes us with the consensus of scientists about our current lifestyles destroying our ecosystems. The part of “this work” that I look forward to engaging in is the beautiful and dangerous task of opening up the pages of Scripture and letting them speak to us in new ways – convicting us in the words of the prophets about our negligence and its impact on the seas and our world. The bounty that God created in the beginning and promises in the end.  The call to community and above all the call for hope that we find throughout. And Jesus’ constant insistence that those on the margins, the forgotten ones need to be taken in, noticed, touched, and healed. Those on the margins suffer the most from large corporate destruction of the earth. The northern suburbs of Atlanta send all of their waste underground; piping it into the poorest communities of South Atlanta watersheds. Toxins are dumped in Aniston, Alabama.  We continue to skim the cream off the top, and send the dirty dregs to places we can forget about, on top of people we have never noticed.Lord, in this Lenten season, help me to be aware of our footprint, my footprints. Help me to lighten my strain on our earth.  Give me the brazen courage to stand up with a voice that does not waver when I plead with God’s people to weigh in on important issues of mining, drinking water, and distribution of GOD’s gifts to us all. The future is bleak with a rapidly approaching expiration date; it is troubling to look at the rising sea levels and drastic temperature shifts. It is even more disheartening that this happens at our own hands; hands into which God placed the responsibility of caring for Creation. Lord, in your mercy, hear my prayer. Amen.