Excerpt from Isaiah 31:1-9

"Like birds hovering overhead, so the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem; God will protect and deliver it, God will spare and rescue it."

Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell

If God's going to spare and rescue, She'd better step on it.

2010 was one of the three warmest years on record, ever.  Arctic sea ice covers less area — by far — then it ever has.  Carbon levels in the atmosphere are rising.  Global climate change and all that comes with it—wild temperature fluctuations, terrible droughts in some place and floods in others, bigger and more frequent storms — are real.  Almost no one who has made a serious assay of the available scientific data doubts this.  Finding ways to live faithfully in the context of this reality will be the single most urgent theological (and scientific, and technological, and ecological, and medical, and political…) issue of the next several decades.  For if the planet becomes uninhabitable, all other theological questions will be moot.

Lent, the great season of spiritual housecleaning, is just around the corner, and our house certainly could use some cleaning.  So this year, instead of giving up chocolate or swearing, give up something whose absence will actually matter in the world: carbon.  Each day during Lent, those who sign up to help save the world by participating in the first-ever Ecumenical Carbon Fast will receive an email with one carbon-limiting activity they can do that day.  Together, Christians from around the country will tend to the Creation God gave us and do our best to change our ways.  It might not be the saving of the world — that's God's job — but we sure will be a part of it.

To learn more and sign up, click here.

Prayer

Lord, I thank you for the Creation.  Help me to take up no more space than I need, use no more than is necessary, and give away more than I think I can.  Amen.

About the Author Quinn G. Caldwell is Associate Minister of Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts.

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