Pre-Advent Devotional

2014 Advent Devotional 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord...make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isaiah 40:3b)



Presbyterians for Earth Care presents our Advent/Christmas devotions based on the work of PEC  throughout 2014 as we have joined members and other partners in seeking eco-justice.  We have asked members of PEC to weave reflections of their witness in that great work and integrate it with the beauty, hope and Mystery that is coming as we anticipate The Gift, The Christ. You can download all the reflections from pre-Advent to Epiphany from the PEC website. The first of the reflections is below. 

Under Our Feet

By Richard Krajeski and Kristina Peterson, 

Pastors of Bayou Blue Presbyterian Church (LA)

“Teacher I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and the bird of the air have nests but the HUMAN ONE has no place to lay his head.” 

(Matthew 8:20)

Sarah and Abraham were promised a new homeland  

And we watch our ancestral homeland vanish under our feet 

Miriam and Moses were led to the hoped-land, free of oppression 

Lost Bayou Home

And we watch our holy-land sink under our feet 

Jeremiah and Isaiah heard a word of return and renewal-land 

And we watch our return-land crumble under our feet  

Ruth had the new home welcome of Naomi  

And we face unwelcoming-places 

We stand and watch our near-place, our know-place, our liberating-place, our history-place, and our hope-place disappear under out feet 

We cannot return to what is-not 

We have no word of promise to our future 

We have no word of milk and honey 

We have no word of return to what we have loved for generations 

We have no guide to a welcoming place 

Our named places have been declared no-places* 

Kivalina, Leeville, Newtok, Isle de Jean Charles crumbling into water 

Once again we are asked to cast our nets aside and follow

Lord Jesus we know! We know with you what it means to have “no place to lay your head!” 

*Official action by NOAA of taking community locations off the NOAA coastal maps; greatest numbers of places lost are in Louisiana and Alaska.

Prayer: Creator God, forgive us our daily greed that has destroyed your creation, the very land beneath our feet.  Help us to take off our shoes and realize that we are standing on your Holy Ground and before you. Help us to see that all Creation is yearning to teach us its ways.  Open our eyes, our hearts and light our way this Advent that we no longer will stumble in darkness but will be liberated by the light of all Creation.  In Christ’s Name we pray.  Amen.

Contributors: Richard Krajeski and Kristina Peterson, pastors of Bayou Blue Presbyterian Church (LA), are active in environmental and social justice ministries and write in areas of sustainable development and ethics, deriving from their long pastorates in the mountains of Appalachia. They helped develop the Wetlands Theological Education Project, a project of the Presbytery of South Louisiana, and are fellows in the Society for Applied Anthropology.