natural disasters – katyandtheword

Stormy Prayer

God,
We are so tired
Of
Unnatural Disasters
1, in a 1,000 chance
Hurricane, Flood, Tropical Storm
Things

Holy Spirit
We do not have to tell you
the weariness
the dwells
within
our very Souls

It is the weariness
that aches
as we
try to figure out
Evacuate
or Stay
What path is the storm
taking?

What Path is
Humanity Taking

Sweet Beloved
Peacemaking
Jesus
You know the trauma
that is being wrought
–this is not just about
climate change

Perhaps it has never been
It is humanity
trying to hold
hands with one another

before
during
and
after

these tragedies

And then
crying out
because we realize
we don’t know how

Teach us
to sit with
the Job’s
who have
lost everything

Teach us to
understand the
bitter Mara’s
and the
resourceful
Naomi’s
with their found
families

Teach us to
listen to the
leadership
of the Esther
who stand up
for the marginalized
and forgotten
at such a time
as this
during trauma
and devastation

Teach us to
sing with Miriam
when there are
moments of joy
and triumph
even in the sadness.

Walk with us God
and teach us
how to love one
another
and care for
your world
and all the humans
in it
we pray.
Amen.

Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”

PHOTO:

MOUNTAIN MULE PACKER RANCH

Photo from: https://www.southernliving.com/hurricane-helene-north-carolina-mules-8721273

Prayer in the Aftermath

God
it is devastating
we are all in shock
the roads
simply washed away
the houses
gone

We pray for the people
the communities
towns
all struck
by a hurricane
some the 3rd in a year
a year’s worth of rain
in a day or two

This kind of change causes us
to use words like
resilient
rebuild
tough

But meanwhile
our souls ache

Because nothing
makes sense
And it’s hard to
take in

Is that why
it is called
after-math
Because
nothing adds up
anymore?

God help us to
walk as slowly
as we need to

to remember
to be
community

with

one another
and to invest
in the long term

God help us
For we feel helpless
and alone
Help us to find
each other

To build
into
each
other

Help us to find
ways to attend
to building
safely
to being
energy efficient
and all the things

But most of all

Help us to be
A community
that
cares
for one another

So that
we do not have
to be
so exhausted
Or feel
alone
When
we do
these hard things
we pray.
Amen

Feel free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord’

Orange Skies

Lord, today I wonder what you think when you see our skies in California, stretched orange with smoke.

When Karachi is flooded.

When Superstorm Laura winked out the power before a heat wave.

When Beirut explodes, and Typohoon Haishen blows through Japan and South Korea.

Did you have a big messy cry when violence erupted not once but twice in Kenosha, WI?

I did.

God I cannot even grasp the news. I can feel people falling through the gaps as children go hungry and try to sign online to education.

Are there days when you feel like you can’t look at the news anymore–does God wish God could close God’s own eyes sometimes? And yet I know you never do.

You work for that justice that has been delayed and therefore denied too long! No justice, no peace.

For you have promised that one day justice and peace will make love!

I worry about the jobless, the homeless, the sick.

I worry that I haven’t upheld my promise to be anti-racist today. (I haven’t, and the work continues)

I am continually angered by the hotspots that people don’t seem to want to control.

I cringe at how in policy, protection and politics about how all lives–don’t!–matter. Cringe and taste vomit in my mouth.

Today, I think the orange skies pretty much exactly show how absurd my emotions have become.

And though I really don’t think you punish us with disasters–I highly suspect there are a million exit signs on the road that we willfully ignore–I do wonder how you process them all.

Lord God Almighty. What do we do when the sky turns orange?

Please take my messy cries, my absurd emotions, my mistakes, my exhaustion, my cringing and the vomit in my mouth. And shape them into a prayer.

An embodied prayer, so that we can do that which needs to be done.

With my entire self I pray.

Amen.

Feel free to hit share or use or adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

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