Care Of The Earth
Care of the Earth
While in graduate school, a number of us decided to organize a morning to care for the land beside the roads in our town. Students were given big black garbage bags, and they walked the streets that curved around our campus. Beer cans, wine bottles, fast-food containers, cigarette packs, plastic and paper bags, moldy food, sanitary products, unpaired shoes and gloves, they all went into the bags. That day the rubbish that clogged the shoulders of roads, collected in culverts, and snaked through the grass and weeds filled hundreds of bags. It was not a large effort, but it marked my attitude toward litter forever. Caring for the earth begins where we are, with the stuff we have and use and want to get rid of.
Scripture makes it clear that we are caretakers and stewards of all that God has made. In the Old Testament, God’s people were to make sure the land and animals had a sabbath rest (Leviticus 25). Just because land could yield crops every year and animals could work every day did not mean that they should. God has asked us to respect the created order. For when we exploit this beautiful world we harm not just land and animals and air but ourselves as well. Environmental degradation increases the labor of those who already struggle to find water and collect natural resources. Economic productivity is never the last word when we are dealing with limited natural resources.
Often we believe that land owners have the right to determine what happens on their land. If the owners want to fill wetlands, if the owners want to build a huge concrete parking lot, if the owners want to post “No Trespassing” signs, if the owners want to cut down rain forests, it is their land and they can do as they please. This mindset neglects the truth that this planet does not belong to us but to God. “The sea is his for he made it, / and his hands formed the dry land” (Psalm 95:5). This world belongs to the Creator, and it is ours only in trust and by divine delegation. Genesis 1:28 and 2:15 recount God’s cultural mandate to Adam and Eve: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’ . . . The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
Creation is God’s gift, and it is to be nurtured and maintained with love and care.
Christians are to exercise loving dominion that honors scriptural values and leaves future generations what they will need.
Reflection Questions
- How does God view the resources you use?
- How does God view your use of natural resources and your due diligence in taking care of planet earth?
- How do you feel about environmentalists, developers, animal rights activists, vegetarians, factory farms, etc.?
What do your hot buttons reveal about your view of dominion?
- Where have you taken for granted God’s good gifts in this world?
Who goes without these gifts?
- What is God asking of you? Listen and journal a response.
Spiritual Exercises
- Plan a way to make the earth more beautiful. Plant flowers in the inner city or around a school. • Sponsor or take care of a stretch of road. • Work to remove billboards. • Share your motivation with others.
- Plant a garden. Share the produce or plants with others.
- Invite children to play in your yard. • Teach a child how to garden. • Take a child on a nature walk and point out environmental goods and ills.
- Become familiar with some part of our distressed environment. (Do a Web search on the environment and you will find dozens of ways to participate in good stewardship of the earth.) Commit yourself to stewardship of some earthly resource.
- Walk or ride a bike rather than drive your car. • Recycle. • Use cosmetics that aren’t tested on animals.
- Take a resource walk. Thank God for the sheep who give you wool, for the cows who give you milk, for the trees that give you furniture, etc.
- Take a walk through God’s beautiful world. What characteristics of God are revealed in earthly beauty? • Journal your discoveries.
- Become conscious of the litter in the places you live and work. Organize an hour or morning when volunteers pick up litter.
Resources on Care of the Earth
The Environment and the Christian by Calvin DeWitt
Under the Bright Wings by Peter Harris
“There are times when nothing holds the heart but a long, long look at Calvary. How very small anything that we are allowed to endure seems beside that cross.” —Amy Carmichael
Compassion
DESIRE | to become the healing presence of Christ to others |
DEFINITION | Compassion means feeling with and for others as well as extending mercy and help to them in extravagantly practical ways. Compassion is part and parcel of sharing in God’s heart for an aching and wounded world. |
SCRIPTURE | “Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.” (Mark 1:41) “I have compassion for these people.” (Matthew 15:32) “Be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” (1 Peter 3:8-9) |
PRACTICE INCLUDES |
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GOD-GIVEN FRUIT |
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