Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.  When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.  Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God.  

To pray for anything but climate change can be interpreted two ways.  If we  pray alongside Bill McKibben, who occasionally describes himself as "just a Methodist Sunday School teacher," we might pray, "Oh Lord, please give the Maldives anything except the climate change which is already resulting in sea level rise."  The average elevation of the islands is one meter above sea level.  Thermal expansion of the ocean already means dire coastal erosion problems for the Maldives.

Another way however to pray for anything but climate change is to recognize that the Maldives have sufficient other creation care needs, enough to keep us so busy that we never get around to praying for climate change.  For example, we can pray:

• Father, help feed this nation whose fishery of tuna has collapsed.
• Father, protect the glories of your coral reefs which are bleaching due to ocean acidification.
• Father, help this nation be better stewards of your beaches through managing its plastic, styrofoam, and other marine trash.
• Father, bless the Maldives's intention to be the first carbon neutral country by 2020.  Give ingenuity to engineers who are planning for offshore wind turbines in the shallow waters between islands.
• Father, bless other marine culture projects besides fishing--for the sake of food and for export markets.
• Father, help officials wisely manage Tillafushi, the giant trash island for the capital city.
• Father, help the government promote household gardens (and the soil building which must precede it) for the sake of better child nutrition. 

And let's additionally pray,

• Lord, according to your mercy, please restore democracy and just rule in this troubled nation.  Maintain peace.
• Lord, bring your good news to a country that the 2012 World Watch list calls the sixth most religiously repressive in the world.
• Lord, please give wisdom  to a strategic meeting being conducted this very month for the islands.      

click HERE for www.agabusproject.org
(the teaching ministry of Eden Vigil)




February & March Podcasts

• Peter Harris on "Creation Care Legacy of John Stott"
• Joel Salatin on "Building Forgiveness"
• Rabbi Moti Rieber on "Keystone XL Pipeline" (after March 9) 
• Susan Emmerich on "Christian Covenants in Resource Communities" (after March 23)

February & March Blog Postings

• "Oxygen is not a pollutant;. . . neither is CO2"
• "Support for ALL my pro-life brethern"
• (+two more after 3/9 and 3/23)