Evening Prayer: Climate Change and Hope

Lord of every season, God who spoke the oceans into their boundaries and painted the monarch butterfly's migration path across three thousand miles — we come to You this evening with heavy hearts and stubborn hope.

We have seen the photographs: glaciers retreating like a congregation slowly leaving a dying church, coral reefs bleaching white as old bones, farmers in the Sahel watching their children's inheritance turn to dust. And yet, Colossians 3:15 tells us to let Your shalom — Your deep, restoring peace — rule in our hearts. Not a peace that pretends the waters aren't rising, but a peace that knows the One who walked on water is still sovereign over the storm.

The Black Church has always understood this. Our ancestors sang "Wade in the Water" because they knew God troubles the waters for liberation. We are a people who have stared down impossible odds and still planted gardens, still raised children, still built sanctuaries with our bare hands. If anyone knows how to hold grief and hope in the same breath, it is us.

So tonight, we pray with calloused hands and open eyes. Show us, El Shaddai, the God who is more than enough, how to tend this burning world the way a grandmother tends her kitchen garden — with patience, with knowledge passed down, with the fierce conviction that what we plant today, someone's grandchild will harvest.