A Prayer for climate grief and eco-anxiety
God,
We confess, we scream
We are experiencing climate grief and eco-anxiety
The weight of the burden is so heavy upon our shoulders
We know that you give us rest
Yet
Standing by does not seem like a wise idea right now.
Not when your world is burning
Not when your children in the Pacific are losing their homes to rising sea levels
Not when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are finding it too hot to conduct ceremony on Country
Can you shake us with the wind?
Can we still see you through the bushfire smoke?
God, we pray for our children
We pray for the teenagers and the students
Coming of age, growing into spiritual and political consciousness
Who have only known a world that is unprecedented
So they take their passion and their fury into the streets
Taking what they have learned
And teaching the adults what it means to bear witness
God, might we see a rainbow
As we tend the garden like the Gardener you are
As we hope not just for a new heaven and a new earth
But that we will not forsake this earth
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
Planted with promise
Rooted within this grief and anxiety
Is a hope for what we do not see
A world which values creation over consumerism
Love for neighbour over lust for stripping the earth of her resources
So we pray
Our Creator, our Saviour who walked this earth
Holy be your name
Your kingdom come, your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Help us to share our daily bread with others who have little
We humbly pray for forgiveness for hurting this earth
As we might have the courage to pursue tangible, radical peace
And lead us not into temptation to maintain the status quo
But deliver us from the evil of our indifference
For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, now and forevermore,
Amen.