Microplastics surge in coastal waterways following extreme rains

A pastoral reflection

It is easy to feel a strange grief over water that looks clean but is quietly saturated with plastic fragments, especially knowing salmon are about to swim through it on their ancient migration. This is not dramatic destruction we can see and mourn in a single image; it is slow, diffuse harm to a creation that scripture insists still belongs to God and still matters to him. The psalmist writes of a world where 'the sea is his, for he made it' — creation care was never a modern add-on to faith but woven into the earliest biblical imagination of stewardship. Jesus, who calmed storms and noticed sparrows, taught that even small, unseen things matter to the Father's attention. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. (Luke 12:6) If God does not forget the sparrow, it is hard to imagine he is indifferent to the salmon swimming through waters we have fouled, or to the coastal communities who depend on them. Cleanup efforts ahead of spring migration are unglamorous, incremental work — the kind of faithful stewardship that rarely makes headlines but reflects a Creator who notices what we might overlook. Tending creation, even in small local ways, is one tangible expression of loving what God has made.

Try this: Join a local waterway or beach cleanup event before spring migration season, or support a coastal conservation group focused on microplastic remediation.