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Important anniversaries in 2020: The first Earth Day in 1970

Lynne Baab • Friday March 6 2020

When I think of what has happened in the 50 years since the first Earth Day, I feel deep gratitude and profound grief. And when I think of this gorgeous fragile earth which reflects the beauty of its Creator, I also feel deep gratitude and profound grief.

I am grateful for Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring alerted the world to the dangers of synthetic pesticides. Silent Spring was one of the triggers for the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. I’m grateful that the first Earth Day was supported by both Democrats and Republicans, and more than 20 million...

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Creative prayer: trees

Lynne Baab • Friday July 19 2019

I was 15 the first time I saw a tree as a thing of beauty. Three trees, to be precise. We had just moved from Virginia to Tacoma, Washington, and our new house had three young birch trees in the back yard, planted close to each other. When the wind blew, they looked like three beautiful girls dancing. My heart always lifted when the wind tossed them into a dance.

For 17 years of my adult life, we lived in a house near Greenlake in Seattle with a huge Western red cedar in the front yard. I can’t tell you how many...

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Creative prayer for creation care

Lynne Baab • Thursday March 7 2019

What’s your favorite place in nature? A beach, the mountains, a lake, a meadow? What’s your favorite aspect of nature? Flowers, reflective water, a specific kind of animal, a tree?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how we can pray more deeply for God’s creation and how we can feel like we are walking with Jesus when we care for creation. I’ll give you some ideas here, and you can see more of them in the Lenten devotional I co-wrote for our church this year.

Gratitude and praise. Thankfulness prayers are deeply appropriate – and even foundational – when we pray...

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Nature speaks about God: The Bible and nature

Lynne Baab • Friday May 4 2018

In our Seattle church, children bring flowers on Easter Sunday, mostly daffodils and tulips, with a few hot house flowers like carnations thrown in. The flowers are inserted in a cross specially designed for Easter. At my friend’s church in Oamaru, New Zealand, children also bring flowers on Easter to place on a cross. Because Easter is in the late summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the flowers are mostly roses and dahlias.

Different flowers, different seasons, different locations. Same God, same Easter, same celebration of Jesus’ triumph over death.

The cross speaks of Good Friday, Jesus’ sacrifice for us, and God’s great redemption...

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