As we celebrate Earth Day, I pray we will renew our relationships with the Earth and with all of creation. Let’s think deeply about the story we are fashioning for the generations of children of God to come. Let’s move Earth Day beyond the familiar, comfortable neighborhood cleanup or ever-so-clever and crafty recycling projects. Let’s make Earth Day more intense than the purchasing of additional recycling and composting bins or raising money for the solar panels to be installed in our church building. These are all wonderful, useful projects, but our God calls us to establish much more and care even more deeply for God’s kingdom.
We worship a God who is still birthing and creating. We worship a Divine Maker who did not proclaim, “It is finished,” in the book of Genesis upon completing the tasks of creating the natural world but rather, “It is good.” God rested with the understanding that there was plenty of work to be done. You and I were birthed to continue caring for God’s creation and to steward the “goodness” of the Earth.
This message is excerpted from “This Earth Day” by Venice R. Williams in the April 2017 Gather magazine. Today is Earth Day.
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