a meditation offered at the interfaith service on Care for Creation Thursday, Sept. 24, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
My name is Sharon Watkins. I serve as General Minister and President of a historic Protestant denomination called the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ.)
I look out over the Congo River. Underneath its languid surface a world teams with life – the big fish Capitaine for eating, animals, plants and microbes (some of them for eating us!)…
On the porch of this Mbandaka home, guest of Congolese church partners of over a century, I am, for a moment, calmed by the river’s constant flow.
The equatorial forest surrounding me faithfully breathes in the carbon dioxide waste of human production and breathes out life-giving oxygen. In my line of vision mango trees are heavy with fruit kissing the ground. They bring to mind, Eden.
A scrap of scripture floats through my memory from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “All of creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”
All of creation waits – the forest lungs of the earth; the birds of the air and fish of the sea, human neighbors local and global – all of creation – waits for us – laity, clergy, women, men – to step up, to reveal our true identity as the children of God.
Creation waits for us to join together, to preserve our God-given, planetary home.
Thank you Pope Francis for urging us – the whole human family together – to answer creation’s longing.
Brothers and sisters, how long must creation wait?
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