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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev Canon Susanna Gunner.

Good morning.

Today is World Earth Day, and an estimated billion people will be taking part in climate action of all sorts. Since it began in 1970, momentous events have taken place on Earth Day each year, not least the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015. And today, President Biden is hosting a global climate summit.

It’s no accident that the first Earth Day came into being just over a year after Apollo 8 had taken what’s been called "the most influential environmental photo ever". That photo with the Moon’s surface in the foreground had captured the Earth rising in distant space beyond. It offered a radically new perspective on our blue and beautiful planet home. Feelings of tender responsibility were stirred, Earth’s fragility suddenly as obvious as the need to care for it.

Like that photo from the moon, pandemic has offered us fresh perspective. We’ve seen with new clarity how our lives are bound up not just with each other’s but with the life of the Earth itself. During the first lockdown this time a year ago, we felt the natural world breathe a sigh of relief and begin to restore itself. Birdsong was heard again in once noisy cities – Wuhan, for example.

Things have already slipped back but having glimpsed a little what restoration might look like, it’s perfect that this year’s Earth Day theme is Restore our Earth. The website suggests many ways of responding to Covid’s wake-up call.

Creator God,
help us to seize this moment,
and work together to restore the earth.

Amen