Sisters and brothers in Christ,
The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) affirm the importance of just relationships among humans and the rest of creation, acknowledging the interconnectedness of all life. The commitments to stop resource exploitation and address the urgent moral crises of environmental degradation and social injustices are not optional for disciples of Jesus Christ. These commitments are at the very heart of the gospel. We continue to hear the cries of creation and the voices of those suffering amid the ecological catastrophe, displacement, nuclear contamination, and continuing colonial oppression. We affirm that these realities are interconnected signs of humanity’s broken relationship with God, neighbour, and creation. They call us to repentance and renewed commitment to God’s mission of justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it (Psalm 24:1), and humanity’s vocation is to care for God’s oikos—the household of life. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls the Church into solidarity with the most vulnerable, whose suffering is a direct consequence of ecological injustice and global inequality. We believe the living testimony that the Spirit of God is already renewing the earth through communities of faith, resistance, and hope.
The WCRC joins a process of recollection, repentance, and recommitment to global economic and ecological justice, echoing the vision of creation’s liberation from suffering. As the Accra Confession underlines, God’s economy, grounded in radical sharing and care for creation, envisions life abundant for all. On this global celebration of Earth Day, 22 April, we honour God’s creation and lament the harm done to the earth at the hands of human greed. Voices from the communion share in cries of deep sadness as climate change destroys ancestral lands, pushes communities to leave their homes, and limits access to resources each day. The cry of the Earth and the cry of the impoverished and marginalised are inextricably interwoven. Yet even in lament, we do not despair, for the Creator who breathed life into the dust also promises to make all things new.
Let us gather together in prayer.
God of all life, Creator and Sustainer of heaven and earth,
We praise you, for the earth is yours, and everything in it. The mountains and the oceans, the forests and the fields, the creatures of the wild and the smallest seeds beneath the soil are yours. You spoke, and light broke forth. You breathed, and living beings arose. You called creation “very good,” and you entrusted it to our care as a sacred gift, not a commodity to be consumed.
We praise you for the rhythm of seasons, the gift of rain, the fertility of the soil, and the web of life that sustains us all.
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
But we also come to you in lament, for the earth groans under the weight of human greed. We mourn the burning forests and the rising seas. We weep for communities driven from ancestral lands by climate catastrophe and nuclear contamination. We cry out against the colonial exploitation that continues to poison lands, water, and peoples whose suffering cries to you day and night.
Forgive us, for we have treated your household as a wasteland. We have pursued profit at the cost of your creatures. We have remained silent while structural sin choked the life from our neighbours and from the earth itself.
Renew us, O God.
Send your Spirit, who hovered over the waters of creation, to hover now over our broken world. Raise up prophets of justice and healers of the land. Convert our hearts from apathy to action, from extraction to restoration, from indifference to solidarity. As the Accra Confession proclaims, teach us to live in your economy of radical sharing, where all have enough because none take too much.
We cling to your promise that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay. Until that day, give us courage to lament honestly, to resist courageously, and to love your earth as you love it, with justice, with tenderness, and with unyielding hope.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who walked this earth, died for its redemption, and rises to make all things new.
Amen.
