An old lady in Nebraska once shared with me something interesting. She came from a farming family and told me that when she was young, if it didn’t rain for a long time, the whole family would fall to their knees and ask God for rain. Today, she said, things are different: people look at their smartphones, “Probability of precipitation 10%,” and forget to pray because they assume it won’t rain anyway. If the forecast showed “probability of precipitation 90%”, you wouldn’t pray either, because it was somehow clear that it wouldn’t rain. In any case, people would no longer pray for favorable weather. With modern means of communication, we get the impression that we have everything under control. Is that really the case? Who has more power, God or the meteorologists? I also once heard the joke: I don’t even believe the weather report when it states afterwards what the weather was like.
On a serious note, if we look at climate change, we can say that the majority of scientists are noticing and predicting the change. And many people are doing everything they can to stop it, mitigate it, and prevent the worst of it. Others deny it or do not see it as dramatic. Have we ever thought about the fact that not everything is in our hands? Do we also pray to God, who created the heavens and the earth, who has an influence on human beings and nations, to help us so that our earth remains and becomes a good place to live? Do we trust that He has much more power than we do, that He can work miracles, that He knows things that we do not know? All this does not relieve us of our responsibility in the least. But with all the discussions, the alarming words and the defiant attitudes, it occurred to me that prayer could be something that each of us can do; and that prayer would really help in any case, as Jesus promised us.
Good God and Lord, you created everything. Your wisdom is boundless. You want this world to flourish. You want our life, yes, the fullness of life. We ask that you help us to care for our planet as best we can. We ask you to keep it in a state where we can live out your call. We ask you to prevent us humans from exploiting it so unnecessarily that future generations will not be able to live here. We ask you to take away the hubris that makes us think we have everything under control. Let us search peacefully for ways into the future. You are the Father of each one of us. Take care of us and let the climate be favorable for us.
Wilde Monk 