REFLECT AND RESPOND

Read Genesis 1 and reflect on God’s creation of this beautiful world.

Write a prayer of repentance and ask for wisdom on what to do next. Through this, think about how you can commit to reducing your own waste.

Listen to Chris Tomlin’s song ‘God of Wonders’. Consider how the world was created as an extension of God’s glory and treating it with kindness sustains its ability to reflect God’s beauty.

production of single-use plastics to combat the problem right at the source.

Reading this may come as a shock, especially when initiatives such as supermarkets charging customers for plastic bag usage have been introduced. The issue, however, is much larger than we might first imagine and as Christians we may wonder what we can do to help.

Genesis 1 reminds us of the Creation story and how God lovingly called into being each part of the world, including our oceans. It was on the third day that God created the seas and on the fifth day he created creatures of the sea.

At the end of each day, we are told that God looked at the world and saw that it was good. God sees his creation as fantastic and loves it. The physical matter that makes up his creation matters to him. It is precious to him.

I was reminded of this through my Lenten devotions. For Lent this year I am reading Saying Yes to Life by Ruth Valerio. The book takes each part of the Creation story and grounds it in theological understanding and links it to effects of the climate crisis around the world, before reminding us of our responsibility as Christians to care for God’s world.

A particular passage that struck me was how precious water is in Kenya. The Kikuyu in Kenya use the phrase mai ni mwoyo, which means ‘water is life’. This phrase inspires proverbs and taboos against polluting water and maintaining access to routes and fords to ensure travellers will not be deprived of any water source they may need. lf for onvenience. These e my nd my faith as acts , I will be inding ncourage you –when we feel our ns aren’t to what we can do is those in and ns to take action

Reading this challenged me to think about how I could safeguard water more by reducing my plastic pollution. Especially as less than half of what we chuck out is recycled. Because water is life, how could I treat it with respect?

Consequently, I have consciously invested in resources such as reusable water bottles, coffee cups and tote bags to prevent myself reaching for single-use plastics out of convenience. These actions advocate my appreciation of God’s creation and subsequently become part of my faith as acts of worship.

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Going forward, I will be consciously reminding myself to waste less. I encourage you to do the same – and to remember that, when we feel our individual actions aren’t enough to help this issue, what we can do is pray! We can pray for those in charge and those in positions to take global action against plastic pollution. This is just as important as any actions taken to reduce our waste.

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