A Prayer for Creation - a Poem

 This past Sunday, May 8, 2022, a member of the congregation I serve preached on Creation Care and the EarthKeepers movement in the Minnesota Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. She asked me to pray early in the service and I assumed she wanted me to pray for Creation. I wrote this poem for that purpose. 

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A Prayer for Creation - A Poem

Oh God, you who creates from overflowing love

Your Spirit swept across the waters –

was it an easy breeze or a category five hurricane?

When the lands were brought forth

was it a violent upwelling or a gentle push?

When you put your hands into the moist clay

to form adam and you breathed Spirit into us

 did you know what we would do

to the garden, to the earth, to your creation?

 

Do you see what we have done and do you cry?

Deforestation for marginal crops

Waters filled with all of our wastes

          We’ve burned the fossil fuels, remnants of your past creation,

now temperatures are rising on earth

and in our hearts as we fight each other

          We’ve sucked all the water out of the ground

Lakes, streams, rivers, reservoirs run dry

and we’ve torn up the earth for the minerals we adore

          The creatures that swim in your waters

                   that fly in your atmosphere

                   that crawl and creep and wiggle and slither on your good earth . . .

                             we have extinguished or are nearing extinction

As one singer once sang, we’ve paved paradise

          and put up parking lots and theme parks and office buildings

                   because we can and we are greedy and

                             we’ve misread your blessing of dominion

 

Forgive us! Help our unbelief and show us your way

          of living together in peace

                   of honoring all you have created

                             of working together to restore what we have destroyed.

          Open our eyes to see all we have done

                   unstop our ears to hear the cries of creation

          lift the veil that clouds our understanding

                   for your creation waits with eager longing

          Give us your heart of creating and loving and caring

 

Keep us ever faithful to you, O God

          Remind us of the covenant of the Rainbow

                   and the covenant of stewardship

                             and the covenant of the Cross

          May your Spirit once again blow across and renew creation

                   and breathe into our lives that we may renew

                             ourselves in your love

 

May your Spirit fall afresh upon us in the name

          of your Son, who lives with and within us

          the one who shows us your Way of Life

                   Jesus, the Resurrected and Living Christ. Amen and amen.