Last Fall, after a hot summer of record-breaking temperatures, raging forest fires, and break-away icebergs, I installed an outdoor drier.
 
   It consists of two steel, T-shaped clothes poles embedded in our backyard and four strands of plastic, wire-enforced clothesline. The parts were purchased at Finkles in Lambertville - "The World's Most Unusual 'Hardware Store'". Neither Home Depot nor Lowe's stocks wash line poles or clothesline. Indeed, when I asked a young worker at Lowe's about these items, he looked at me as if I had come in from Mars or Jupiter.
 
   My nod to the environment (a zero-carbon way of drying clothes) reminds me of Shirley Erena Murray's, "Touch the Earth Lightly" (739, Evangelical Lutheran Worship):

   Touch the earth lightly,
   use the earth gently,
   nourish the life of the world in our care...

   "Let there be greening," she writes:

   birth from the burning,
   water that blesses,
   and air that is sweet,
   health in God's garden...

   A responsible stewardship of God's good earth is affirmed in Holy Scripture. A creation-story says we're placed in God's bountiful garden "to till it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). 'Tilling' is not a right to foul the air, pollute the water, or endanger the land. 'Keeping' is a matter of conserving and protecting nature as coworkers of the Creator-God.

   Let us pray,
   Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth, you made us coworkers in your creation. Give us wisdom and reverence to use the resources of nature so that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  
Prayer for the Stewardship of Natural Resources
p.80, Evangelical Lutheran Worship)

Contributed by Dick
Sunday May 15, 2011
Liturgical Year A Week 25
Liturgical Color: Gold
Sunday Gospel reading:
Fourth Sunday of Easter