A Creation Friendly Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the first day of Lent. We have ashes imposed on our foreheads and begin a forty-six day season of renewal and repentance that leads up to Easter. Generally, as part of this season, many people choose to give up or take on certain things that lead them away from sinful or destructive habits, and into a life that is more rewarding and beneficial for others.

This year, Heather and I are aiming to have a “creation-friendly” Lent. Environmental destruction is an important concern for Christians, and lately we have both felt the need to focus on how we ourselves are contributing to that destruction through own choices and behaviors. We are hoping that, through this season of Lent, we will become more deliberate in thinking about God’s concern for the planet and acting that out in our daily decisions.

The first Lent was extremely creation-friendly. Jesus wandered around in the wilderness and ate nothing, taking not a single thing away from the earth’s resources and simply being in the nature that God created. We are not going to go that far, but we do have four areas in which we intend to practice being creation-friendly this Lent:

1) Doing an environmental justice/creation care Scripture reading plan, to learn and to meditate upon what God says about the creation

2) Spending more time connecting to nature, hiking and being in God’s creation at least once a week

3) Committing to a plan to reduce our carbon footprint and do less harm to the environment in our lifestyle choices, especially in what we eat and drink

4) Sharing our efforts with others and learning from their experiences

We’ll be sharing more as we go along. In the meantime, please feel free to share your suggestions and comments, and may the Lent season renew us all.

Steve