Prayers for hope in the face of Climate change

Psalm 43

“Why are you so downcast, O my soul?

      Why so disturbed within me?”

Lord, the enemy is near, stalking our children.

Vindicate us, O God,

      and plead our cause against an ungodly world system;

      rescue us from deceitful and wicked powers.

You are God our stronghold.

      Why have you rejected us?

Why must we go about mourning,

      oppressed by the enemy that lies in wait for our sons and daughters?

Send forth your light and your truth,

      let them guide us;

Let your light and your truth guide how we deal with our hopelessness,

Let your light and your truth guide us to live in a way that fights instead of feeding the enemy.

Let your light and your truth reveal the foolishness of greed and rampant consumerism and lead the nations to repentance and the path of life.

“Why are you so downcast, O my soul?

      Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

      for I will yet praise him,

      my Saviour and my God.”

Psalm 28

“To you I call, O Lord my Rock;

      do not turn a deaf ear to me.”

For if you remain silent,

      all our efforts to defend our climate will be worthless.

Help us to stand against the culture of our times where people speak cordially with people they meet while living lives that will destroy the lives of people they will never meet.

Where institutions show no regard for the works of the Lord and what his hands have done, may you tear them down and never build them up again.

Where corporations are getting fat by consuming our children's inheritance, repay them for their deeds and their evil work and transform them to respond to your divine calling and regard your creation with reverence.

“Praise be to the Lord,

      for he has heard my cry for mercy.

The Lord is my strength and my shield;

      my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.

My heart leaps for joy

      and I will give thanks to him in song.

The Lord is the strength of his people,

      a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.

Save your people and bless your inheritance;

      be their shepherd and carry them forever.”

Psalm 24

“The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it,

      the world, and all who live in it;

for he founded it upon the seas

      and established it upon the waters.”

Lord, your world is in danger. The enemy is hiding behind vested interests and sceptics, waiting to plunder and rape your earth.

We cry to you, Lord, protect your creation,

      defend the work of your hands.

Save our generation from our addiction to fossil fuels.

Wash our hands of their clutch on dirty energy,

      clean our hearts of our desire for more and more.

Turn our souls away from materialism

      and our desires from taking and taking from your sacred, limited world.

Give us a vision of the blessings we will receive if we turn away from idolatry of the economy and bow to wisdom and truth.

Let man and woman-kind see that true happiness rests in enjoying your earth as you intended, not according to the lies of the enemy.

Show us that a kinder and simpler lifestyle will allow us to see your glory more clearly.

Let your glory of the King of glory shine through your kingdom.

“Lift up your heads, O you gates;

      lift them up, you ancient doors,

      that the King of glory may come in.

Who is he, this King of glory?

      The Lord Almighty –

      he is the King of glory.”

Psalm 4

“Answer me when I call to you,

      O my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

      be merciful to me and hear my prayer.”

      How long, O men and women, will you turn the glory of the earth into dangerous pollution?

How long will we love the delusion of consumerism and seek the false gods of money and possessions?

Help us to remember that you have set apart the godly for yourself;

      that you will hear us when we call to you.

In our exasperation and anxiety do not let us lose hope;

      when we have quiet times in the day,

      let us search our hearts and be silent.

Help us to live our lives sacrificially and to trust in the Lord.

Many are asking “What is the point? The earth is finished. Who can save us now?”

      “Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord.

You have filled my heart with greater joy

      than when their grain and new wine abound.

I will lie down and sleep in peace,

      for you alone, O Lord,

      make me dwell in safety.”

Psalm 46

“God is our refuge and strength,

      an ever present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way

      and the mountains fall into the sea,

though its waters roar and foam

      and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God ,”

      a source of blessing to refresh us as we fight the enemy.

Pour on us your spirit, O Lord, and equip us for battle.

      Do not fail us now when we need your sustaining power.

Give us the time, Lord, to defeat climate change before it takes your world to wrack and ruin,

Give us the energy and hope we need to keep going when all seems lost,

Give us the funding to do battle against rich vested interests,

Give us the people with the necessary talent and wisdom that comes from you.

Be our ever present help in these troubled times.

Dispel the night of danger by your dawn of deliverance.

Where leaders stoop to feed our ever growing hunger for more and more, open their eyes to the wisdom of simplicity,

Where governments buy our votes with cheap flights and petrol, open their ears to the laws of nature that are screaming at us to stop pushing their limits.

Lord, make our thirst for fossil fuels cease to the ends of the earth,

      break our addiction to dirty energy,

      shatter the clutch of consumerism,

      quench our desire for more and more material things.

      “Be still and know that I am God;

      I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.

The Lord Almighty is with us;

      the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Ruth Jarman writes:

I'm declaring war - anyone want to join me?

Inspired by Walter Wink's "The Powers that be", Bruggerman's bible study on Jeremiah and by the Psalms that I'm reading for Lent, I am trying to write some prayers. As you can see, I'm hardly an expert in liturgy hence I'm using a lot of Psalms as is - I hope it doesn't look sacrilegious to re-write the word of God according to Ruth.

The aim is to give vent to our anxiety (we are commanded to pray instead of worry) and fight the causes of climate change on a spiritual level - to use all the weapons in our armoury to fight what, on the face of it, is already a lost battle.

We are fighting the most powerful structures in the world and the most basic human nature. Of the few in our world who understand quite how terrifying the future is, only some believe we have any hope to change the entrenched situation. We need God's help here.

And in the words of Walter Wink, God's hands are tied if we don't pray.

Please could any inspired CEL members also write some prayers and think about how best to pray them.

Our situation is too urgent to have an annual climate change "day" - we've got 10 years to take the brick off the accelerator and put it on the brake before our world tips over the edge - so how about a climate change day of the month or day of the week - maybe Tuesday, the second day of the week when God created the sea and the sky.

And we could all pledge to fast (if we want to) and pray at a certain time of the day - noon? 7am? Or we could have waves of prayer with people praying on the hour every hour to cover the whole day (I'm not saying we have to pray for a whole hour - waves have dips between them). Anyway, comments/ideas please! to community-of-prayer@christian-ecology.org.uk

P.S. This idea is as well as everything else we have to do to fight this thing, not instead! This is to support our activism on the spiritual level.