Four Words for Earth Day 2013

For an hour yesterday, sixty neighbors and church friends fanned out through the parks, nature trails and public spaces around our neighborhood and collected 650 lbs of litter.

It was a celebration of Earth Day that I think would have made Earth-maker smile. Kids and parents had fun together, neighbors met or got re-connected, the landscape looks much better for our efforts, and the ducks, snakes and other wildlife in the area have a healthier habitat.

Call it a springtime facelift or an overdue winter cleanup, this little act of earth-keeping and creation care was a way of giving something back to the land that gives so generously to us all.

As a follower of Jesus, I'm taking Earth Day as a chance to say three words to my Creator – no, make that four.

The first word is an exclamatory “O”! What a marvelously complex gift so full of wonder and joy! Today is one for praise – I know that because at 4:30 this morning a cardinal was straining to teach me his canticle outside my window!

The second word is “Thanks”! Thanks for such a lavish and generous gift that keeps on giving. Thanks for the privilege of life amid such beauty and wisdom.

Thanks for the privilege and honor of being entrusted with such extravagant resources. I could sit at the top of the food chain like a little emperor, as if it was all for my benefit alone, but I can’t. I’m convinced that the gifts of advanced reason and language, culture and technology are given so that you and I, together with the whole cosmos, can give glory back to our Creator.

But that leads to my third word – “Sorry” – because clearly our tribe has done more than its fair share of hogging the spoils of the earth without regard to others – whether our global neighbors or the generations to follow us. This Earth Day for the first time, I think, I’m groaning a little in synch with the whole creation that groans under the oppressive weight of human recklessness and disregard, my own included. There is room for confession, lament and apology.

And so my last word is “Yes” – a joyful repentant “yes”!. “Yes, my Lord and God, I long to do your will! Yes, I will open my eyes to be more attentive and mindful of the gifts and mercy you give me every day, every hour! Yes, I will join you, generous God, in being a giver, not just a taker!

And Yes, I join with others who care about the well-being, the shalom, of the world you have given us!”

Yes, Yes, Yes! Happy Earth Day.

P.S. Three of these four words are inspired by Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality - A Life with God in 12 Simple Words. 

The Discipline of Gratitude

Today is World Water Day – a United Nations celebration of the vital importance of water for our lives and for the planet.

Here’s a quote from my upcoming book Downstream from Eden:

"Biologically, our bodies are about 60% water; newborns are closer to 75% but by their first birthday, they’re down to about 65%. Our brains stay around the mid-70’s and blood is 83% water. Every cell in our body contains water and every cell membrane has a meticulous arrangement for allowing water in and keeping it out so cells don’t just disintegrate. Water is the crucial mechanism for transporting nutrients to our cells and shipping away the waste."

The Discipline of Reverence, Worship and Awe

This afternoon my wife and I walked with some friends in the woodlands above our home. We live on a protected moraine, vital to the re-charge of groundwater for our area. The past few weeks have been extraordinarily warm, so the snow is long gone, and the ponds are now a raucous chorus of frog songs. Moss on stones and rotted stumps virtually were glowing in the shafts of sun beaming into the still drab-brown woods waiting for spring.

A Leap of Faith

Less than one in a thousand of us has February 29 for a birthday. This date comes only around every 4 years.

It takes 365 days plus almost six more hours to make a full orbit around the sun, so we get a quarter day behind every year. Back in the time of Julius Caesar (46 BCE) astronomers added an extra day to the calendar every four years to catch up. But that extra day actually gives us more time than we deserve,

In Praise of Amniotic Fluid

The amazing gift of water completely surrounds us long before we draw our first breath. And the wonder of it all dazzled me afresh each time I watched one of my children being born!

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body

and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,

as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

Psalm 139:13-15 NLT

When my wife was in labor with our first daughter, her nurse, who was also a friend and a seasoned midwife, whispered to her after several fruitless hours of labor, ‘I’m going to break your water, that will get things moving.’

A Psalm of Water for Thanksgiving

This week-end I will be in New England to celebrate an early Christmas with my three children and six grand-children.

We will have turkey and potatoes and an abundance of food – and, no doubt, a glass of wine to mark the occasion. And we will pause before we eat to do something very important.

Harvest Providence

This week-end is Canadian Thanksgiving. . .

And this word from Psalm 65 seems like the perfect 'water' text for the occasion

You care for the land

and water it;

you enrich it abundantly.

The streams of God

are filled with water to

provide the people with grain,

You drench its furrows

and level its ridges;

you soften it with showers

and bless its crops.

Psalm 65:9-10

Water Cycle

Round and around it goes, steaming up as vapor and then falling as rain or snow. It’s the hydrologic cycle and it goes on endlessly day after day, night after night all over the world. A billion tons of water every minute - up and down. Every day about 12% of the vapor in the atmosphere falls to the earth and is replaced by a fresh supply.

And everywhere this enormous gift of rain or snowfall accomplishes a variety of essential services for our earth by cleansing the air, moderating the temperature and, most obviously, nourishing the plants and animals on the earth.

Learning to Trust - or Distrust God

At the end of forty years, God told Moses that the years of Israel’s deprivation in the desert had had a purpose. 'My design', God said, was ‘to humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart” Deuteronomy 8:2. 'As a father disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you’ (v.5) ‘to do you good in the end’ (v.16).

Hunger and thirst are powerful tests – and God wanted Israel to internalize deep in their consciousness a conviction that they could trust their covenant Partner. Experiencing God’s provision of water and food in God's time would lay a foundation of trust in other areas of life. But Israel never seemed to pass the trust-test. They were habitual whiners, constantly grumbling against God, testing God’s patience.

If You Had Only One Wish . . .

Kaitlin Boyda really knew how to live.  Here is an inspiring story from Compassion Canada

Kaitlin Boyda, who lived with a faith and compassion that inspired hundreds of people to give to water projects through Compassion Canada, passed away on Thursday last week, May 5, 2011 at the age of 17.

Kaitlin, from Lethbridge, Alberta, was diagnosed in the summer of 2009 with a cancerous brain tumour at age 16 and has spent the last year and a half battling its affects. When she was approached by the Children’s Wish Foundation in December 2010, she decided not to choose a wish to benefit herself, but to donate the wish to build a well for children in need in Uganda.

Tears of Joy

For Valentine’s Day, here is a story of great love and deep gratitude and the most exquisite water we know.

She was a woman who got invited to men’s homes for only one reason. But she heard about another man who was different – a giver not a taker. He himself had a reputation for socializing with people like her and maybe she had met him somewhere – maybe overheard him telling another harlot that God heals the broken-hearted, washes away tears of shame and forgives debts long overdue.

How could she know for sure? And how could she honor him – this man who looked past her disgrace and saw worth in her beyond what she could see? How could she express the gratitude and affection welling up inside her?

If it weren't for the Sky . . .

Day two and three of the Great Creation Story witness two stunning wonder-of-water events – the emergence of the atmosphere and the separation of dry land from surrounding oceans.

Two crucial environmental events that define the Earth as we know it! Today we’ll consider the first – and in the next post, the second.

The troposphere – what we commonly call Sky, but including the air around us – is a fragile and invisible membrane between us and the cold dark. A mere 15 kilometers of space between sea-level and the highest clouds holds most of our air. It’s where most of our weather happens.

Even the 50 kilometers out to the ozone layer is proportionately thinner than the skin of an apple, but it is a complex and highly functional domain.

The Great Bethlehem Water Caper

Water from your hometown well is always the sweetest - especially when you’re far from home!

Biyar Daoud - King David Wells, Bethlehem

David was a king-in-waiting – in hiding, actually, with a band of desperado friends. His home-town of Bethlehem had recently fallen into Philistine hands and David began to crave the best water in the world.

"Would I ever like a drink of water from the well at the gate of Bethlehem!” he sighed.

His daring friends secretly accepted the challenge, broke through enemy lines, secured a skein of water and carried it back to David - an exploit full of bravado and esteem for their good friend and leader. No doubt they told in vivid detail how they had pulled off the caper under the noses of the sleeping Philistines.

But for David, the hazards his comrades had faced to get this water for him, made the water sacred. It was no longer a consumable commodity. Drinking it would have reduced it to mere water, when it represented his friends life-blood. Only God was worthy of such a sacrifice. So instead of drinking the water, David poured it out reverently before the Lord.

It’s a timeless tale of friendship and heroic action and it shows how the most common thing like water can have meaning far deeper than the thing itself.

Let Justice Flow Like Rivers

 Where the river flows, life abounds. Ezekiel 47:9  The Message

Satellite images illustrate the vital importance of water in the Egyptian desert. From ancient times the civilizations of Egypt have depended on the Nile River for its agriculture and commerce.

So vital was the water that ancient Egyptians deified the river. They called the Nile-god 'Hapi'. Every year in late summer, Hapi’s breasts over-flowed with the surplus of the rains in the highlands to south. Hapi made Egypt wealthy and the affluent enjoyed security and sophistication. The gods seemed to smile on Egypt.

Israel saw the world differently.

Thanksgiving

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.

His love endures forever.

Psalm 136:1

Tiffany and I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving on Saturday, leisurely canoeing a stretch of the Grand River south of Kitchener under a cloudless sky.

We confirmed the great exultation “the earth is full of God’s unfailing love” especially the trees, radiant in October extravaganza, displaying God’s majesty in orange, ruby and gold, mirrored in the river inviting us to join their 'Ode to Joy' in awe and gratitude.