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.

 

Prayer written by Abbey Sim and shared as part of Common Grace's 2022 Season of Creation Evening of Prayer and Praise.