Young at Heart Message
 
Before I begin today’s sermon, I want to note that I used much of the same sermon today as I used for the pet blessing service last year. I did not do this to be lazy though, I assure you.
 
Rather, I read through it to see what I said last year and determine what I wanted to say this year. But as I read, tears came to my eyes and I decided that actually, last year’s sermon was pretty good and said all that I’d like to say again this year.
 
So, for those of you with memories like an elephant, I hope you get something new out of this year’s sermon. And for the rest of you, there might be some things I say that remind of you last year and that’s because they should.
 
Let us begin:
 
Every year, Moravian Clergy celebrate Cup of Covenant. It is an opportunity for us to recommit to ministry and remember our ordination vows to study, pray, care for souls, preach, teach, and administer the sacraments.
 
In the Canadian District, because our clergy are spread out between Edmonton and Calgary and aren’t able to connect in person very often, we have an annual Cup of Covenant retreat at King’s Fold Retreat Centre.
 
Each year, I have the opportunity to be with my colleagues, and, importantly, I have the opportunity to rest, read, and be present with myself and with God.
 
Last year, the retreat happened the week before we did this pet blessing service, and one of the things I intended to do while I was at the retreat was read a book called Divinanimality in preparation for this sermon. I hoped the book would give me some insights into the relationships we have with animals who walk the Earth and journey with us throughout our lives.
 
However, I began reading the book, and it was DENSE. It was deeply philosophical, it used big academic words that I found unnecessary for this topic, and it really didn’t resonate with me for this purpose.
 
And then, as I was sitting on a bench overlooking the river, listening to it babble as a bird sung its song nearby, I realized I don’t need a deep philosophical or academic discussion to help tell you what I already know about the divinity of animals.
 
I began thinking about my own relationship to animals in my life, and a flood of memories came rushing back – so quickly, in fact, that I felt an immediate need to start writing this sermon so I didn’t forget what I wanted to say about it, even though I was supposed to be on retreat! (And today, I’m very glad I listened to that instinct!)
 
My experience with animals began at a young age. In fact, I think it’s likely that animals have been a part of my life since the day I was born. And actually, it’s deeply, generationally ingrained in my family’s history.
 
Both my Mom and my Dad’s families were farmers in Wisconsin. By the time I was born, my Dad’s family was no longer actively farming so I never experienced their farm.
 
But my Mom’s family was still actively farming. As a matter of fact, my parents - and therefore my little helpless baby self – all lived together in the house my Mom grew up in on their family farm.
 
My Dad was an active partner in the farm for the first few years of my life, so being around animals – not just dogs and cats but livestock like cows and pigs – was natural for me and I felt at home in their presence.
 
I got to experience the disgusting joy of allowing a calf to suck on my fingers, creating a beautifully sticky, sloppy mess that you didn’t want to wipe on your clothes because if you did, you’d just transfer the sticky mess to another spot on your body later.
 
I got to walk through the stanchions in the barn, and I was strangely mesmerized by the milking process, the smell of the cattle, and the way their tails would flick around. Touching a cow’s nose is wet, but oddly satisfying.
 
I was also simultaneously fascinated by and fearful of the bull in the cage in the corner. I was told from a young age that bulls can be dangerous, and I shouldn’t get too close. But the poor guy just seemed so lonely!
 
When I was around three years old, my parents had to move on from farming for a variety of reasons, so we moved into town. My grandparents continued farming until I was in my early teens, so I still have tons of memories and joys of farm life, but my daily routine no longer included livestock.
 
Instead, my family eventually got cats, and then a dog. My young life was formed by these relationships to some extent, but it wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I decided to get my very first dog who was completely mine and not a family dog.
 
And that dog – a beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog named Kodiak – was the dog that needled his way deep in my heart and really ignited my physical and spiritual journey with animals. Kodiak helped me see God in new ways through his joy and zest for life, his steady calm, his ability to love all people and all other animals he encountered, his stoic demeanor, and his adaptability to the chaos of my life at that time.
 
Kodiak moved with me every single year of his life to a new dwelling. He saw other dogs come and go from my life, he was integral in my learning process, and he lovingly supported me as I worked to become a professional dog trainer and, eventually, as I bought and ran a dog daycare.
 
Kodiak also helped me understand the beauty and the divinity of other animals.
 
I began to notice the squirrels, rabbits, birds, and other critters that somehow managed to survive city life.
 
I started to notice deer, opossum, raccoons, skunks, cows, and horses not as simply parts of the landscape, but as individual members of God’s creation that had purpose, joy, and beauty that was all their own.
 
I also began to notice when animals would appear in my life, and I started to resonate with a deeper meaning behind their presence.
 
I am an avid road biker, and one time I decided to bike from my home out toward the area where my grandparent’s farm was. As I biked past one farm, I saw out of the corner of my eye a large animal running alongside me.
 
I turned to look, and a cow was running the fence line, not unlike a dog that might joyfully bound alongside their human. This cow was just living its best life, happily galivanting along the fence in sync with my riding.
 
That cow brought me so much joy in that moment, and it was like a little “wink from God” – a reminder that God is not some far-off entity, but is in fact right there with us, bounding along playfully, joyfully, and with a presence that we too often forget to notice.
 
Similarly, I lived in the country shortly before I moved to Canada, and one of my dogs – Lyra, who is no longer with me and who was also Lacey’s daughter – would ALWAYS have a line of cows following her when we walked past a nearby farm. The group of cows that lived in that pasture changed each season, but each new group of cows loved her just the same.
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I had four dogs in my home at the time, and Lyra was the only one the cows would follow like this. There was just something about her that they seemed to connect to. And, if I’m being honest, I connected to that same part of her, and she connected in a similar way to me.
 
Lyra just had a way of reading my emotions and empathizing with me that no other dog I’ve ever lived with has been able to do. And I think those cows saw that in her, too.
 
I could go on and on about the animals that I have shared my life with, and the animals that I have encountered in the natural world, and I am sure you all have stories about them too.
 
We seem to know intuitively that animals were created by God for a purpose, and that purpose is not simply to serve humans.
 
The Message
 
God loves animals as he loves humans, and animals are deeply grounded in God’s love and care. There must be truth to this statement because we see it over and over again if we pay close enough attention.
 
In fact, Job 12 states, “if you want to learn, then go and ask the wild animals and the birds, the flowers and the fish.” It goes on to say, “every living creature is in the hands of God.”
 
This text is ancient, and yet there is incredible wisdom in these statements. If you want to learn what God has done, any of the animals can tell you, probably in a deeper and more complete way than any human can.
 
Why? Well, because every living creature is in the hands of God. It’s not just humans, as we’ve spent the last six weeks discussing. God cares about all living creatures and holds each one – from the crawling ant or the pesky mosquito to the regal lion or the majestic elephant – in deep, abiding love.
 
So why wouldn’t we trust the experience of animals with regard to God? I believe they actually know more about God than we can know.
 
Animals don’t overthink God. In fact, they don’t think about God like we do at all. They don’t analyze what scholarly articles or theologians say about God. They don’t listen to what pastors with degrees say about God. They don’t philosophize so much about their own relationship to God that their words become incomprehensible, like the book I tried to read last year.
 
Animals experience God. Animals know God in a deep, profound, rich way that we often struggle with. But there are some people who have been able to tap into this energy.
 
Jane Goodall is a common example. She knows what most of us could hardly imagine about the relationship of animals to God and our own spirituality. In 2021, she received the Templeton Prize, and in her speech, she said, “In the rainforest I learned about the interconnection of all species, each with a role to play. I felt a strong spiritual connection with the natural world.”
 
Those of us who share our lives with pets often know about a deeper connection to the divine that occurs when we are present with our pets.
 
One of my favorite books is part of the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle called A Swiftly Tilting Planet. In the book, there is a threat of nuclear war, and the family is essentially fighting the powers of evil to prevent the nuclear war from happening.
 
The family had recently lost their dog from the two prior books, Fortinbras, and one of the main characters, Meg, explains in the book that the dogs in their family just seem to show up on their doorstep. In that fashion, a dog shows up on their doorstep in the midst of the nuclear war chaos.
 
The dog’s name, they decide, is Ananda, which another main character, Charles Wallace, explains is Sanskit and means “That joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse.”
 
This family knows the importance of animals to life, to spirituality, to joy, and to our continued existence as a species on this Earth.
 
Ananda becomes an important conduit for Meg as Meg and Charles Wallace stay connected across space and time via a form of telepathy. Ananda strengthens their connection through touch and through her warmth, her breath, her beauty, and her Spirit.
 
L’Engle, the book’s author, was deeply Spiritual and also a devoted Christian. The beauty with which she is able to relay the significance of animals to human spirituality is profound.
 
Those of us who have experienced this type of relationship with our pets or with other animals know the truth of her writing. Scripture knows the truth of these relationships, too.
 
Animals are mentioned throughout the Bible so many times that I own a book which documents every instance of a mention of animals in Scripture. And, it is a thick book.
 
Jesus himself is referred to as the "Lion" and the "Lamb,” which symbolizes His dual nature. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah represents Jesus’ power, sovereignty, and victory over evil. The Lamb of God signifies Jesus’ humility, gentleness, and sacrificial atonement for humanity's sins.
 
Even in the time of Jesus, there was an awareness of the significance of animals to our lives and to the existence of the world.
 
Humans throughout history have recognized the importance of animals in service to humans, but there is also often a deeper connection that goes beyond service to humans.
 
We can see and understand that animals have feelings and emotions, though they are often expressed differently than ours.
 
For example, Lacey and I had to spend a lot of time when I first brought her into my life working to understand each other. We have spent our life together doing this work and building a relationship that is unique from the other relationships I have had with my dogs.
 
Because Lacey is a Great Pyrenees, she was bred to be incredibly independent. She was also bred for a specific job: to guard livestock.
 
As you can see, however, there are no livestock in her life and there never has been. Without access to the one thing she was bred to do, she started using her natural skills to protect our home… from everything. Every little flap of a butterfly’s wings a kilometre away would cause Lacey to bark when I first got her.
 
I have had to do a lot of work to manage her environment so that she does not bark all day long and anger the neighbours. But I also had to learn to express my gratitude to her for the work she has done over the years to protect myself and my home.
 
Once I began to thank her for her work and for her care, our relationship changed dramatically. She settled into a life with me that allowed her to be more at ease.
 
Many of you who share your lives with animals likely have come to know a similar relationship with your pets. There is a richness that comes from learning to speak a language that is foreign to us.
For verbal humans, we can struggle to speak in ways that do not use words, and yet animals require exactly this from us. We must learn to observe and communicate differently than what we are naturally inclined to do.
 
And in that learning there comes deeper understanding. And there is also a spiritual richness of experience that comes from this understanding.
 
We are raised in a culture that insists that we learn about God. We are more unfamiliar with the concept of experiencing God. Animals, on the other hand, are completely experiential.
 
We can learn from them as much as they can learn from us. Tapping into the nature of animals and learning to experience God and spirituality instead of trying to wrap our heads around it can be freeing and fruitful.
 
So, as we move into our time of blessing the animals who are present here today, may we seek to experience our faith, our spirituality, and our relationship with God differently.
 
May we come to know God through experiencing God, through the experience of Jesus Christ on Earth, and through the animals that God created to share the beauty of the Earth with us.
 
As we go from here, may we open our eyes to God’s beauty in all its forms and rest in God’s Love and Joy. Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
Faithful God, help us to experience Your love, Your grace, and Your joy through new and different ways of being in the world. Thank you for the gift of each and every creature on this earth, from ants to zebras and everything in between. Thank you for gifting us with the responsibility to care for, protect, and learn from the creatures that inhabit our world. In humility and love, we pray. Amen.

​The Message

Today is the final Sunday of our sermon series on Care for Creation. We are talking about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

And that is a mouthful!

In a nutshell, this goal is trying to protect ecosystems, manage forests, stop land damage, and protect wildlife.
 
From the report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, “preserving diverse forms of life on land requires… efforts to protect, restore, and promote the conservation and sustainable use of terrestrial and other ecosystems.”

This sermon series has been admittedly difficult for me to preach, and I’d like to try to tell you why.

I do think these topics are extremely important. And I also think it’s OK – in fact, it’s good for all of us – to deviate from the usual for a sermon series on occasion.

It’s good to hear different voices and perspectives – both for me and for all of you.
 
But the thing that has been hard about this sermon series is that I feel like no matter how I preach it, it comes off as a lecture about how we aren’t doing enough for the environment.

And, it’s also hard to bring the sermon around to Good News when, in all honesty, the concerns about our environment are getting more serious every day.

It seems it has accelerated quickly.

So the reality is, we aren’t doing enough. We probably aren’t doing enough personally.
 
But really, in order for there to be significant and impactful change, it must be done at the highest levels. It must be mandated.

And whenever we are talking about mandates, it brings about concerns from the populous about personal freedom.

But, when given personal freedom, most of us (including myself) are going to choose the most comfortable and convenient options available.

I’ll give you an example. When we were under water restrictions, there were things I did to help do my part to conserve water.
 
When I showered, I would turn the water off when shampooing, conditioning, washing, etc. Essentially any time I wasn’t rinsing.

When I washed my hands, I turned the water off while doing the same.

When brushing my teeth, I would only use the water I needed.

But, when the water restrictions lifted, I mostly went back to my usual patterns. I just love a hot shower that isn’t interrupted by a shot of cold air when the water is off.
 
Another example is a little more complex, but, if you bear with me, it gets to heart of the difficulty with this sermon series.

When I am in Canada, I generally feel fine, even good, about the fact that I must bring a reusable bag to the grocery store.

I also feel good about using compostable utensils at restaurants, I love that many restaurants have compostable materials and a place to throw them, and as annoying as paper straws can be, I don’t mind using them.
 
But all of those things that make me feel good only make me feel good because they are the only option I have.

And to be fair, if I could choose between plastic and compostable options, I would generally choose compostable options.

But, if the only choice was plastic? I would not put in the effort to take my own reusable utensils to a restaurant, or my own metal straw, or my own containers for food.

When I travel back home to the United States, I notice a major difference.
 
And, it makes me incredibly uncomfortable, actually.

There are none of these better choices for the environment there.

Almost all restaurants are still using plastic utensils, none have composting options to throw leftover food or compostable materials, and you can still get plastic bags every time you go to the grocery store.

So my point here is this – I can feel good about the changes that have been made in Canada that are good changes for the environment.
 
But I also recognize that those changes had to be implemented at a regulatory level. Had they not been, no business and few individuals would be inclined to make any changes to their behaviour.

So, I can preach until I’m blue in the face about the ways in which we can do better personally and as a church, but the impacts we can make on an individual level are miniscule compared to the impact that really needs to be made at a national (arguably, at an international) level.

The problem is not that we are bad people who want to misuse the environment.
 
And, I don’t want this sermon series to come off that way.

The problem is that we are people who are concerned about the environment, we do care, and many of us genuinely want to do better. 

Yet, we live in a culture and a system that is set up in such a way that in order for us to make vast and impactful changes, we must all be willing to do so.

Or at least, enough of us must be willing to do so that it could make a lasting impact, and we need to drive those changes with consumer choices.
 
And in order for that to happen, changes must be made at a higher level, and we must be willing to give up “personal freedoms,” in some sense of that word, in order to work toward the common good.

Unfortunately, that means trusting our governments to help us, or even force us, to make more environmentally conscious decisions.

Because just like we can see a stark difference between living here and living in the US in terms of how our societies are being more mindful of these things, we can see that the reason for the vast difference is because Canada has made rules at a governmental level.
 
So, it has been hard for me to stand up here and preach these things to you all.

While yes, there are small changes we can all likely make, the reality is that unless we collectively choose to make large, impactful decisions about the effect we all have on the environment, very little is going to change.

I am really proud of the changes that Canada has made. Yes, some of the things we do here means we have less personal freedom around choosing plastic options or more environmentally conscious options.
 
But the changes that have been made on a national level are impactful, and for those of us who care about these things, we should be proud of that fact.

I can only imagine what a difference it could make if the United States followed suit.

If similar changes could be made in the US, it wouldn’t be long before other countries would be doing the same, as much as I don’t love that this is the truth of the matter.

But with power comes responsibility, and countries like Canada and the US can be benchmark countries for environmental awareness.
 
It is a systemic issue, so no matter how much we can do personally, real change must happen at a higher level.

All of that said, I have continued with this series, not so that we all feel like terrible people because we were born into a system of over-consumption.

Rather, I think it is important for us to understand our part in that collective system. It is important for us to understand the system itself if we want to start making change happen.

And, we must be willing to lead the change.
 
Let’s think about Luke 13: 6-9 for a moment because this is a small example of a person who took the initiative to lead change, or at least to try to make a small impact on the environment.

A vineyard owner has a fig tree growing on his land, and he has been waiting for three years for it to bear fruit.

Finally, frustrated with the tree, he orders the tree to be cut down.

But the gardener who oversees the man’s vineyard asks if he can have one more season to see if he can help it bear fruit.
 
He tends to the tree, fertilizes it, and works to change the conditions of the soil so that the tree can grow fruit.

He takes the initiative to foster change and help it grow.

This parable depends on the belief that humanity can have a positive impact on the earth and what it produces.

The gardener knew that sometimes, creation needs tending in order to be fruitful.
 
This parable speaks against a “throwaway culture” – one in which we are willing to easily throw something away if it is no longer useful to us.

In this case, the gardener prevented the tree from being cut down and instead, helped it produce.

In our case, we might think about this in terms of things we throw away that could be recycled, reused, repurposed, or donated so that someone else could find use or value from them.

In what ways could we be more like the gardener? In what ways can we make our own impact on the environment?
 
As much as we are living in a system that is hard to change, there are things that we can do, and the more of us that work together to do these things for the benefit of future generations, the bigger impact we can have on human life as well as the natural world.

Before we close this sermon series today, I want to share one more thing with you.

I talked with Bishop Amy Gohdes-Luhman, who also now works for the Board of World Mission and had a huge part in creating the resource I used for this sermon series.
 
I asked her if she would create a video for me that concludes this series, and she delivered.

So I’d like to share that video with you now as a conclusion to this series.

I hope you enjoy hearing her input on these topics.
​
Amy also offers us a closing pastoral prayer at the end of her video.

Young at Heart Message

Today we are continuing our sermon series on Care for Creation by talking about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources.

From the report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, “oceans, along with coastal and marine resources, play an essential role in human well-being and social and economic development worldwide. They also help regulate the global ecosystem by absorbing heat and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and protecting coastal areas from flooding and erosion.”
 
Humans seem to enjoy exploring the depths of the sea, but most of us never get to explore much beyond perhaps snorkling in the ocean.

Certainly some people have the ability to go deeper, diving into oceans or exploring ocean caves.

But most average people will only ever explore the depths of the oceans through documentaries or other second-hand accounts of life under water.

Even those of us who live near fresh water sources - a river, lake, or stream – won’t ever explore the depths of those bodies of water in a way that would allow us to truly understand them.
 
There are many movies that explore what it might be like to live under water, or what it means to rely heavily on the water.

Disney, for example, has put out several animated movies over the years about ocean life.

While these movies don’t necessarily give an accurate picture of what under-water life is like, they do help kids to understand that life below water is vastly different than life on land.
​
A few examples of these movies that are made for kids include:
 
The Little Mermaid: This movie was created in 1989 and it dabbled in the lives of mermaids, which are fictional ocean dwellers.

As you can see, she has fishing nets, candles, mirrors, clocks, chests, etc.

Now, much of what she’s collected may have come from shipwrecks, but the implication here is that a lot of stuff from us humans ends up in the ocean eventually.

Disney doesn’t make a statement about the negative impacts of human waste on the oceans in 1989, but we can see that it was something that people were at least aware of at the time.

Some of the stuff we create ends up in the ocean, where it impacts ocean life.
 
In 2003, the movie Finding Nemo was released by Disney and Pixar, and in 2016, they released the movie Finding Dory as a follow-up to the original.

The story of Finding Nemo is about how a little clownfish named Nemo is captured by a diver, separated from his family, and taken to live in an aquarium in a dentist’s office.
​
All of the fish in the aquarium dream of breaking out of the aquarium and living back in the open ocean again.

​While not explicitly about the impact of humanity on ocean life, both movies do address some of these concerns.

Finding Nemo, for example, depicts images of overfishing when Dory and Nemo end up getting trapped with a massive school of fish in a commercial fishing net.
​
Dory and Nemo end up helping all the fish escape by telling them all to swim down, putting too much pressure on the net and causing the fishing equipment to break.

​Finding Nemo also depicts images of the pet trade and the impacts to ocean life, along with the effects of boat traffic on the ocean.
​
Finding Dory explicitly depicts concerns about plastic waste when Dory gets tangled in a plastic 6-pack ring at the beginning of the movie.

​Also in 2016, Disney released the movie Moana, which is a tale about a Polynesian tribe of people who live on an island surrounded by the ocean.

The tribe is not a specific tribe – rather, it is a fictional tribe based upon Polynesian peoples across the Pacific Ocean.
​
The premise of the movie is that the people on the island discover that their food supply is dying out – their trees are not producing fruit, and the fish have left the lagoon, moving further into the ocean where the people cannot access them.

Moana is more of an environmental allegory that illustrates the breakdown of humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

It also depicts the ways in which humanity can impact ocean life, though it does this by demonstrating what happens when humanity disconnects from the natural world and favours greed and environmental exploitation over connection and care for the environment.

All of these examples show us how children are exposed to these environmental concerns in ways that help them begin to think through these issues.
 
Movies like these seek to entertain, but also cultivate an awareness of the ways that humans impact the environment and especially the depths of the ocean.

For those of us who don’t live near the ocean, it is hard to truly understand the impact.

We can only be aware of the impacts of our world on the oceans and marine life through hearing it from others, reading about the impact in the news, or visiting the ocean and witnessing changes ourselves.
 
The Message

What does the Bible say about about life below water?

Today we heard two passages – one from Genesis and one from the Gospel of Matthew.

In Genesis 9:2, God gives us more than just plants to eat.

After the flood, humans are given permission to use what lives on the earth for food – everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.
 
This passages reminds us that not only do we have a responsibility to the things above water, but we also are responsible for life below water.

Bodies of water have their own mystery and power, as has been explored through the movies mentioned earlier as well as so many other streams of media.

We also now know that underwater ecosystems are affected by what we do on land and in the air.

Caring for and helping to sustain healthy ocean life is a massive human responsibility.
 
Just because we were given the privilege of consuming living things on land and in the sea for sustenance and survival does not mean we have been given the right to abuse and exhaust these resources.

We also heard the passage from the Gospel of Matthew today in which Jesus calls his first disciples – all of whom were fishermen.

Other Gospel passages, including Luke 5: 1-11, depict fishermen who fish all night and catch nothing until Jesus tells them to cast their nets again.
 
In these passages, it is clear that even in Biblical times, the importance of life below water was known.

In fact, the Sea of Galilee is an incredibly important body of water throughout the Gospels and the life of Jesus.

It is also a central geographic location in the Gospels, and it carries deep spiritual meaning for those who live near it and rely on the water for sustaining life.

Fishing was also an important industry – fundamental to the agrarian economy of the region. Most people were connected to this industry in some way.
 
So not only did people rely on life under water for food, but they also would have understood the connection between water and its living resources.

They would have known the importance of preserving and not over-using the resources because of the direct impact on their well-being.

In Luke 5: 1-11, they fish all night and don’t catch anything. This would have been concerning and would have triggered an awareness of the importance of the connection they had to life below water – much like the people of the island in Moana would be very aware of this as well.
 
We are becoming more and more aware of the impact in our world on marine life as well, even if we do not live near the ocean.

News articles crop up regularly about the impact of plastics on ocean life, or the impact of the oceans on weather patterns.

Just the other day the BBC had an article about the combination of an immense Pacific Ocean heatwave plus a “super El Niño” having profound effects on US and Canadian weather over the coming year.

The impact of the rise in ocean temperatures is felt across the globe, not just in ocean cities.
 
News articles like this certainly give us cause for concern, and can often make us feel like there is little hope for change. But they also are cause for gratitude.

Indeed, we simply come to accept that the world is changing and there is not much we can do about it.

But there is still hope.

While seeing the barrage of articles about the changing environment, rising ocean temperatures, melting glaciers, etc. can feel scary and make us want to stick our heads in the sand, the fact that they are becoming more prevalent means we are becoming more aware.
 
And because we have become more aware, we have made changes, both individually and on a national scale here in Canada.

While we also know that there is more that we could do, it is helpful to name some of the ways we have already been working to do better recently.

There are many examples of things that Canadians do that I never thought about before I moved to Canada.

First of all, I am ashamed to say that I never reused plastic Ziplock bags before I moved here.

Now, I wash them and use them many times before they become unusable.
 
Composting was not a large-scale operation where I am from. If people composted, it was for their own personal garden.

And few people I knew did it.

But here, there is a municipal composting program and that is a pretty amazing thing!

People have also become accustomed to using reusable or compostable grocery bags rather than single-use plastic bags.

And, when you walk through the soda aisle, you see more cardboard holding packs of cans together than plastic.
 
We see more restaurants using compostable utensils and straws rather than single-use plastic utensils and straws.

I even noticed changes to packaging of some brand-name items at places like Costco to reduce the amount of plastic used in packages.

To-go containers at restaurants are now more often compostable or reusable.

And many of us have already made small changes in our lives to reduce our individual impact on the environment as well.
 
These issues are becoming more urgent, and we do still need to be aware.

We need to care and we must continue to work at it.

We are called to be stewards of this Earth. That is made clear in the very first book of the Bible.

Jesus reminds us, through the use of parables like the parable of the talents, that a steward is someone who is trusted to care for something responsibly rather than wasting or destroying it.

This is our call when it comes to the natural world - the land, the sea, and the creatures that dwell in both.
 
We are stewards of the earth. We are called to care for the earth, and for one another.

So when we hear about the scary things happening with regard to the environment, we must not stick our heads in the sand. Instead, we must approach these stories with gratitude that they make us more aware.

We must allow it to hurt our hearts a little bit. And then we must explore additional ways to take action.

We must talk about it with one another.

We must allow ourselves to be changed first, so that we can be the change that the world needs.
 
So, as you go into another week, I invite you to continue thinking about and wondering about these issues.

Reflect on the ways that life below water affects us, but also on the ways that we have an effect on ocean and under-water life.

We cannot exist without the vast and fragile ecosystems of life below water.

May we remember this as we continue to become more aware of our call to care for creation.

Amen.

Let us pray:
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God of the tides and currents, your pull on the earth is magnetic. When the tempest frightened the disciples, your Son, Jesus, awoke and calmed the waters around them. Tempestuous and tranquil waters - you offer us both. Let us tend to the waters and care for all that finds life within them. Amen.