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. 

Drinking It In

Thanksgiving Gratitude Edition

Guest Writer - Kathy Legg

Land that drinks in rain often falling on it and produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. Hebrews 6:7

I live in a semi-arid zone, where rain does not often fall. And when it does the hard dry clay soil may not be well able to drink it in! It pools and puddles on the surface, or runs off in rivulets.

The Sound of Silence

"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land-- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
Amos 8:11

Amos had grown hoarse pleading with the wealthy farmers in the north of Israel to see that their religious faith had to translate into compassion and fair dealings with the poor – or it was completely fraudulent. He warned them that if they wouldn’t listen to God’s words, God would give them the silent treatment. And that silence would not remain golden for very long. People cannot live without spiritual resources, without answers for the questions of life. Their fears mount and they search desperately for direction.

Deep Calls to Deep

My previous post, As the Deer, reflected on the power of thirst as the writer of Psalm 42 said As the deer pants for steams of water, my soul thirsts for you O God.

Just a few lines later the writer's language shifts and he imagines himself in a middle of a raging river - “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me” Psalm 42:7. From 'parched soul' to 'deluge' in less than a minute.

Turbulent water can knock you off your feet, all right. Every year all around the world we hear tragic stories of people being swept away by the current of rivers. But what prompts the psalmist to shift so radically from thirsting to drowning?

By the Rivers of Babylon

The rivers of Babylon were famous long before the late ‘70’s disco group Boney M sang about them.


The Euphrates River  - Photo by Jayel Aheram

The Tigris River and the Euphrates define Mesopotamia – a huge fertile plain ‘between the rivers’, the cradle of civilization. But Israel experienced Babylon as a wasteland, a spiritual desert, despite its rivers of affluence and so-called civilization.

Babylon’s armies had sacked Jerusalem mercilessly, captured her leading populace as trophies-of-war, and marched them to Babylon. No place could have felt more alien to the exiles than the banks of the Euphrates.

Extreme Stress

A few months ago the L A Times carried the good-news story about a 30 ton gray whale that had become tangled in a thick snarl of fishing net.

For two days it labored in a Southern California harbor until a marine rescue team was able to set it free.

It took them four hours to soothe the distressed whale and cut away the ropes that had knotted around the whale’s tail and head. It’s hard to imagine such a huge majestic creature held prisoner to a braid of nylon cord. It’s hard to imagine a 40-foot whale helpless and drowning.

Rizpah and the Rain

Suffering sometimes triggers good soul-searching. And a three-year drought set King David on a desperate search for answers.

What he uncovered was a story of treachery and genocide that hadn’t registered a flicker on the national conscience.
See 2 Samuel 21:1-14.

It involved one of Israel’s tribal neighbors, the Gibeonites, who lived east of the Jordan. By ancient treaty, (see Joshua 9) these people had enjoyed protection and immunity from attack by Israel. But David’s predecessor, Saul broke faith and attempted to annihilate them – and almost succeeded.