Opportunity

This morning I was going through my list of endangered species, praying for them one by one. For whatever reason, this morning the whole process was feeling very mechanical. So I stopped and prayed, "Lord, please help me to see this not as a chore but as a gift, a wonderful opportunity to make a difference." And I was filled with a wonderful joy and desire to keep praying. It was awesome!

Unexpected Joy

This morning I was running late. I was determined to pray my way through my list of species before I left--maybe more out of stubbornness than anything else--but I was so worried about being late that I couldn't focus. I was saying the words, but my heart and mind weren't focused on what I was saying. I finally had to just stop for a minute and say another, entirely different prayer: about trusting things to God, about not worrying about things that weren't worth worrying about, that I would really mean the prayers that I prayed this morning and that I would believe that God could fulfill them.

As I kept reading, the species names that I read filled me with an inexplicable joy and seemed incredibly funny to me. Here's the funniest:
Mavomavo Giant Treefrog
Mawblang Toad
Maxwell's Girdlepod
Maya Knobtail
Genus Maydelliathelphusa


May you find God's joy today!

Marbled Freshwater Stingray

The marbled freshwater stingray (Himantura oxyrhyncha) is found in three or four rivers in Cambodia and Thailand. It is extremely rare, and known to science from only five museum specimens. Nothing is known about its habits in the wild. It is known, however, that this ray is in danger because of heavy fishing and pollution in its rivers, as well as because of the pet trade. A Thai conservation scheme was put on hold in the late 1990s.

Image from eol.org

The Beginning

This blog is about my prayers for the earth. The earth needs prayers, and I believe that prayer can make a difference. I have therefore made a commitment to pray for every single endangered species on the earth, starting today.

I know, it seems impossible. Even I'm a bit wary of starting something so huge (the list of endangered species that I'm using has over 20,000 species on it). But I think it's something that's worth doing. So this blog will be about my journey to pray for every single endangered species on the planet, what I learn. I created this blog, not to glorify myself, but because several internet searches about prayers for or prayer chains about specific environmental problems returned very very little. So I just started my own blog about it! I hope and pray that this blog will encourage you, the reader, help you learn about God's creation and the problems it faces, and most of all, that you will meet God here.