Thursday, March 18, 2021

For years I had been seeing car decals that had the letters “OBX” and wondered what that meant. Then someone said to me, “Have you never heard of the Outer Banks?”  I admit I had to look it up to learn that the decals referred to a stretch of beach along the North Carolina coast, one that is now threatened by climate change. 

The tiny town of Avon, North Carolina, faces a serious choice: raise taxes by 50 percent to try to protect itself against the rising sea or face the loss of the road that gives the community its life.  The sea is rising and even faster than we imagined, and it is rising because we have not cared or the earth that God has given us.  What’s happening in Avon will happen along our New Jersey coast as well.

If we do not turn our lives around, we will lose more than beaches that give us summer fun. Metanoia is the Greek word for turning around, and as we come to God this Lenten season, it means more than just giving up chocolate.  It means really turning our lives around in such a way that we stop what is inevitable now but does not need to be. It means consuming less and sharing more. The rising sea level is the Jerusalem we face.

Prayer for the Day

From our ways of self-deception and self-indulgence,

    We come before you, O God, searching our hearts;

Move us beyond our preoccupation with our own lives and desires

    And awaken us to our behavior that is destroying your creation.

Turn our hearts and deeds towards the world beyond

     So we turn our lives around and truly care for the earth.

We ask this in the name of him who offers us strength,

     Even Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen

Thoughts for the Day

The first few feet of sea level rise will displace more than 100 million people worldwide and turn our Gulf and Atlantic communities into pre-Katrina New Orleans – below sea level and facing super hurricanes.

                        Joseph J. Romm, American climatologist

There must be progress, certainly.  But we must ask ourselves what kind of progress we want, and what price we are willing to pay for it.

                        Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, conservationist (1890-1998)

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who live in it,

   For God has founded it upon the seas and established it on the rivers.

                        Psalm 24: 1-2