Contemplating Environmental Stewardship

Dear Creator God,

You shaped the rivers before they had names. You breathed oxygen into forests that would stand for a thousand years. You designed the salmon to find its way home across three thousand miles of open ocean — and You called all of it good.

Yet we confess, Lord, that we have treated Your creation as a commodity rather than a covenant. We have poisoned the waters You walked upon, stripped the cedars of Lebanon that once made Solomon weep with wonder, and filled the skies You painted at sunset with the grey haze of our indifference.

Matthew 5:9 calls us blessed when we make peace — and peace, true shalom, wholeness, extends not only between neighbors but between humanity and the soil from which You formed us. The peacemaker picks up the litter on the trail. The peacemaker plants the oak tree she will never sit beneath. The peacemaker chooses the harder, slower, costlier path because she knows that every river and ridge bears Your fingerprints.