We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Renewing our Creation

The current ecological crisis affects most of 6 days of creation – 2nd Day the sky , 3rd day – dry land, seas, plants and trees were created, 5th days creatures that live in the sea and creatures that fly were created 6th day animals that live on the land and finally humans

There are 4 areas of the environmental crisis.

  1. burning of fossil fuels(oil, coal, and natural gas are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that will cause temperatures to exceed 1.5C, most simulations suggest.  The three major fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—combined accounted for about 77.6% of the U.S. primary energy production in 2017:  However, fossil fuel emissions represent the greatest cause of air pollution
  2. Rising temperatures causes rise of sea levels though warming of water and melting of glacier
  3. Severe water shortages can be expected when there will be no or only very little ice left to melt in the summer. This will affect food supoplies
  4. the global benefits provided by trees are being threatened by deforestation and forest degradation.  Deforestation is a major cause of global warming. When trees are burned, their stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere.  The most important factors are clearance for agriculture (including cattle ranching), poor governance (illegal logging, corruption, and ineffective law and order), insecurity of land tenure, the system of international trade, poor planning (e.g.building of major trunk roads in forest areas), and unsustainable logging

We long for the new creation when all is made whole, complete, contained, safe.A ll of us, no matter how our lives have gone, came from the life giving safety of our mother’s wombs. And somewhere deep down inside, it is to that safety and security that we all long to return.

Scripture describes this womb-like environment for humanity as the Garden of Eden, where all of creation lives together in harmony. 

This is our season of waiting.

In birth and death, springtime and harvest, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, we are waiting on God.

And while we wait, we undertake our journeys within this world, hoping for the day when we will reach that place that the generations before us have reached—the presence of God, our Garden of Eden.

But as we journey, we must remember and rejoice in the fact that God has granted us the miraculous privilege of a sojourn in the midst of God’s intricate, magnificent creation.

God, who is constantly breathing and speaking new life into all of creation, will renew our strength and give us wings like eagles for our journeys to God, who is our beginning and our ending and our beginning again.    

For everything there is a season.

So may we rejoice as the seasons turn, one to another, and as the days that seem long turn into the years that fly by.

But when we lost our way, so did the rest of creation.

But although we have lost our way, we have never lost our longing, and neither has creation.

And in that longing for the new creation lies our hope, and the hope of the whole creation

Jesus himself connects us with one another when we find him present in our midst as we break the bread and pour the wine and share it together, connected around God’s table, so that we can then go share God’s love with the world, working to reconnect what has been lost and disconnected.   

And when we come together in God’s name to reconnect with creation itself, the creation that God calls good, the creation that God dwells within, the whole creation that God will gather in at the end, the insects, the birds, the creatures, the trees, the oceans and rivers and the earth itself,

God will rejoice as we work to reconnect all that we have broken and divided.

And we will find joy and rejoice ever more deeply and fully as God reconnects all of us in the fullness of time into God’s new creation– as it was in the beginning, and is now and ever will be, God’s world without end.