Evening Prayer: Environmental Stewardship

Gracious Creator, who painted the monarch butterfly's wings in amber and black, who carved the riverbeds and filled them with rushing water, who breathed life into soil so dark and rich it crumbles like chocolate cake between a farmer's fingers — forgive us. Forgive us for treating Your garden as a warehouse.

Micah 6:8 asks what You require: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with You. Tonight I confess that walking humbly with You means walking gently on the earth You made. John Wesley himself rode on horseback through the English countryside, preaching in open fields because he believed God's grace was as wide as the sky above him. He understood that creation was not a backdrop for the gospel — it was part of the sermon.

So teach me, Lord, that when I waste what You have given, I rob someone downstream. When the well runs dry in a village I will never visit, that is a justice issue, not just an environmental one. When the air grows thick over a neighborhood where children play, that is a mercy issue wrapped in science and soil.

Make me a steward who acts, not just one who admires sunsets and calls it worship. Give me the courage to change one habit this week — to carry the reusable bag, to plant the single tree, to pick up the trash that is not mine — because the earth is Yours, and everything in it.