Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

Father in Heaven, You are the model Father. You show us what it truly means to love our children. While those who don’t know you worry about what they will eat or what they will wear or where they live, You feed the birds of the air and clothe the flowers of the field, and You assure us that if You do those things, You will take care of us, too, so that we will seek first Your Kingdom and Your righteousness, knowing that all these things will be added to us. You also tell us that You chasten those You love, because You aren’t satisfied that we should go on, day after day, wallowing in the same sins that have enchained us for decades before, but are determined to conform us increasingly, day by day, to the image of Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus. Help us to learn, as we honor You, to honor our own parents, too—and all who are in authority over us—as a way of honoring You. Lord, one dishonor often shown to parents that particularly comes to my mind as I think about the work of the Cornwall Alliance is ignoring lessons of the past, and I think of this particularly in regard to climate change. It has become so commonplace for people to think that hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc., of today are unprecedented, but in reality there really is nothing new under the sun, and if we would look carefully back through the records we would see that similar things have happened before—just as earth’s climate has warmed and cooled repeatedly in the past. I pray that You will help people to learn the lessons of history, lessons recorded by their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, that we might not naively embrace false alarms. Give us discernment, Father, and help us to seek wisdom with all our hearts. In Jesus’ name, amen.