Welcome to Wednesday! It’s good to be with you today in the Pastor’s Workshop.
As we work this week we’re going back to God’s “very good” beginning of Creation. Our theme text is Genesis 1:26-31. Our guiding thought: “God made it good. Our job is to keep it good.” Our title is: “Care for Creation”.
On Wednesday we explore the context of the text. We look at the world into which the Word is spoken. We see how the contrast between the “world” and the “Word” adds perspective to how we look at life and clarity to how we understand our role in being a witness for God.
The Beginning as described in Genesis 1 reflects a harmony, an order, a beauty, a balance, a fullness, a fruitfulness that is of God’s making. The world as God created it in the Beginning is “very good”.
As you look at our world today you can still see some of that “very goodness”. You see it in the majesty of mountain vistas, in the glow of a sunset, in the beauty of a garden, in the ice caps of the Poles and in the deep blue of the sea. You experience it in the incredible bio-diversity of life. We truly live in a “miracle of nature” that is of God’s making.
At the same time, as you look at our world you can also see an encroaching ugliness. You see it in strip mines that have leveled mountains, pollution in the air that has blocked the sun, melting of the ice caps that has “shrunk” the Poles, a “garbage dump” supposedly the size of Texas in middle of the Pacific and the “dying” of reefs along the coast. You see some of the impact that is of our human making.
As we contrast these two views, the world of God making and the world of our making, we hear the call in this Scripture to exercise “dominion”. As we found yesterday, dominion doesn’t mean “domination to exploit”. It means “responsibility to care”. Dominion invites us to think about the consequences of our choices in how we treat God’s good creation. It summons us to be good stewards.
When it comes to the environment so many issues seem so large. Carbon dioxide emissions, global temperatures, sea levels, etc. are massive concerns for the well being of our world. Our “modern way of life”, not only in the US but in all the world, is partly responsible for these changes. Sometimes we ask, “What can I do?” and “Will it really make any difference?” We feel so small in the face of such a great concern.
And yet it is important to exercise our care and start our stewardship of God’s good world. We can “start right” by doing simple, small things. Recycling, conserving, educating ourselves, and writing our legislators are just a few of the many things we can do to “start right so things will go better” (Remember the premise of this series – “When we start right things go better. And when things go better we can finish well.”) We can start our stewardship of God’s good world in small but significant ways.
As you go through this week I invite you to look and see the “very goodness” of God’s creation on display. I also encourage to ask, how can I be a good steward of this beauty and all the goodness God has given me?
In that blessing and in that responsibility I look forward to enjoying the goodness of this day and being with you again tomorrow in the Pastor’s Workshop.
Prayer: Gracious God, thank you for the blessing of this day and beauty of our world. Thank you for giving me the eyes to see and the ears to hear all the created wonders of Your making. Help me to know that even as You make things good, You call me to keep them good. Strengthen me to be a good steward for You. This I pray in the name of the One “through whom all things came into being”, even Jesus Christ our Lord.