September 1, 2024
A woman holds a sign reading “We are heritage protectors” as young people gather outside the plenary buildings at the United Nations climate summit COP28 on the conference’s last day to push for an agreement on a complete fossil fuel phase-out to be part of the final text adopted. (Photo: LWF/Albin Hillert)
Each year from Sept. 1 to Oct. 4, the Christian family unites for the Season of Creation, a worldwide celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home. It is a special season where we celebrate God as Creator and acknowledge Creation as the divine continuing act that summons us as collaborators to love and care for the gift of all that is created. As followers of Christ from around the globe, we share a common call to care for Creation. We are co-creatures and part of all that God has made.
Our well-being is interwoven with the well-being of the Earth. We rejoice in this opportunity to safeguard our common home and all beings who share it. This year, the theme for the season is “To hope and act with Creation.”
Amid the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, many are beginning to despair and suffer from eco-anxiety. As people of faith, we are called to lift the hope inspired by our faith, the hope of the resurrection. This is not a hope without action but one embodied in concrete actions of prayer and preaching, service and solidarity.
Jessica Maudlin, Associate for Sustainable Living and Earth Care Concerns, Presbyterian Hunger Program
Revised Common Lectionary Readings for Sunday, September 1, 2024, the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Today’s Focus: World Day of Prayer for the care of Creation
Let us join in prayer for:
PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Kim Pryor, VP, Director Trust Relationship Services, Presbyterian Foundation
Rick Purdy, Manager, Human Resources, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)
Let us pray
Triune God, Creator of all, we praise you for your goodness, visible in all the diversity that you have created, making us a cosmic family living in a common home. Through the Earth you created, we experience love and nourishment, home and protection.
We confess that we do not relate to the Earth as a Mothering gift from you, our Creator. Our selfishness, greed, neglect, and abuse have caused the climate crisis, loss of biodiversity and human suffering as well as the suffering of all our fellow creatures. We confess that we have failed to listen to the groans of the Earth, the groans of all creatures, and the groans of the Spirit of hope and justice that lives within us.
May your Creator Spirit help us in our weakness, so that we may know the redeeming power of Christ and the hope found in him. May the groans of the Spirit birth in us a willingness to serve you faithfully, so that we may hear and heal Creation, to hope and act together with her, so that the first fruits of hope may blossom.
Loving and Creator God, we pray that you will make us sensitive to these groans and enable us to have the same compassion as that of Jesus, the redeeming Lord. Grant us a fresh vision of our relationship with Earth, and with one another, as creatures that are made in your image.
In the name of the one who came to proclaim the good news to all Creation, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Credit to the Celebration Guide for the Season of Creation
You may freely reuse and distribute this article in its entirety for non-commercial purposes in any medium. Please include author attribution, photography credits, and a link to the original article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeratives 4.0 International License.