Today is Presidents’ Day. The binge-buying craze is on. The “deals,” those items advertised as below cost kept intruding on my regular computer reads ad for items I would never consider buying. And it’s not just Walmart advertising enormous flat screens and other electronic gadgets, but all kinds of online only suppliers of our not needed but desired items.
Meanwhile, in the small town of Manville, people whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Ida in 2021 just learned that now FEMA has said their homes were too costly to be raised to protect them in the event of another Ida. This is the same administration that removed wetlands from the scope of the Clean Water Act.
Greedy developers continue to push for circumventing the rules of wetlands, build and sell houses leaving buyers, desperate for housing, to assume the burden. Of course, those homes never should have been built in the first place, but towns, concerned about their tax base, continue to permit them, and we continue to suffer the effects of the climate change the White House says is not real.
Prayer for the Day
Soon rising over the horizon, daybreak will emerge,
Shoppers will ready to go for their purchases;
Thinking of the spring that will come in spite of the snow,
We forget the warming Atlantic will swirl into our lives.
Wake us into action, O Creator, so we protect your creation
Enabling it to thrive for generations to come.
In the name of the One who calmed the storm,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite to stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat.
Johan Rockstrom, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
We’re losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals for the planet’s health and our own.
Diane Ackerman, American poet, essayist, naturalist
Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,
Fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling God’s command!
Psalm 148: 7-8