Praying During the Season of Creation
by the Rev. Kevin McGrane,
Priest-in-Charge, Trinity Episcopal Church in St. James
and Creation Care Ministry Chair
During this season, is there a way we can pray for creation in an intentional way? Is there a way we can pray in an intentional way for creation in any season?
The answer is yes. The Episcopal Church’s Creation Care Ministry has provided us all with many ways to pray for the world God has made. Below is a prayer that can be incorporated into any liturgy, and below it is a link to a page which supplies many prayers and liturgy resources from the national center for Creation Care Ministry.
Please consider joining many, many faith communities in prayer during this time to form a church concerned with the one single planet we all inhabit.
Creator of All,
We are grateful that from your communion of love you created our planet to be a home for all. By your Holy Wisdom you made the Earth to bring forth a diversity of living beings that filled the soil, water and air. Each part of creation praises you in their being, and cares for one another from our place in the web of life.
With the Psalmist, we sing your praise that in your house “even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young.” We remember that you call human beings to keep your garden in ways that honor the dignity of each creature and conserve their place in the abundance of life on Earth.
But we know that our will to power pushes the planet beyond her limits. Our consumption is out of harmony and rhythm with Earth’s capacity to heal herself. Habitats are left barren or lost. Species are lost and systems fail. Where reefs and burrows, mountaintops and ocean deeps once teemed with life and relationships, wet and dry deserts lie empty, as if uncreated. Human families are displaced by insecurity and conflict, migrating in search of peace. Animals flee fires, deforestation and famine, wandering in search of a new place to find a home to lay their young and live.
In this Season of Creation, we pray that the breath of your creative Word would move our hearts, as in the waters of our birth and baptism. Give us faith to follow Christ to our just place in the beloved community. Enlighten us with the grace to respond to your covenant and call to care for our common home. In our tilling and keeping, gladden our hearts to know that we participate with your Holy Spirit to renew the face of your Earth, and safeguard a home for all.In the name of the One who came to proclaim good news to all, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Get more Creation Care resources: Loving Formation – The Episcopal Church
Tags: News / Creation Care