Over the past month in light of COP26 (UN Climate Change Conference) and our concern about climate change, utility and fossil fuel companies have been pushing back, claiming that it will cost too much to reduce our dependence on what’s killing us. There’s no question that tackling the climate catastrophe facing us will cost.
We need to get past our short-term mentality and look to the long term. Protecting our natural resources is critical and, in the end, will lead to a more peaceful planet. Looking to create energy through wind, solar, and other innovative means will help reduce our dependence on both fracking, which destroys the environment and communities, and on foreign sources from countries run by dictators and human rights violators.
Climate change and peace really do go together. As we continue through this second week of Advent, we should consider how our daily lives can bring peace not just to ourselves but to the world around us.
Prayer for the Day
During this season of longer nights, open our eyes to your light,
Help us to look through the windows of your majesty;
Bring us a new vision of your world, full of possibilities
So we may see your grace in the world around us.
Teach us how to find peace Iin the world around us,
And help us to always work for your kingdom.
In the name of him who came to show us the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
Wendell Berry, poet and writer
To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up ... Each of us must find our work and do it. Militancy no longer means guns at high noon, if it ever did. It means actively working for change, sometimes in the absence of any surety that change is coming.
Audre Lorde, from her book Sister Outsider
Your hands have made and fashioned me;
Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
I know, O Lord, that your judgments are right,
And that in faithfulness you have humbled me..
Psalm 119: 73, 75