Greetings on this Thursday! As always, it’s a blessing to be with you in the Pastor’s Workshop.
Thursday is a big day in the workshop! It’s the morning we take our work from the week and discern a message for Sunday. We pray the Spirit will be at work in a special way as we seek a “right word” to open the truth of the Scripture for all.
Our message this week is entitled, “Care for Creation”. Our Scripture is Genesis 1:26-31. Our main thought: “God made it good. Our job is to keep it good!” We are stewards of God’s good creation.
With that said, what would be the sermon for this Sunday?
Here are some of my talking points:
As we start out a message on creation here’s a “creation quiz”. What’s the largest organism on earth? A blue whale, a giant sequoia, a sperm whale, or the pando aspen clone.
If you picked the aspen clone (which I didn’t!), you are right! How could an aspen be larger than a sequoia, or a huge whale? The aspen clone, which is made up of 47,000 aspens, is a single tree with a sprawling root system. All the aspens are one because they are interconnected.
As we think about God’s good creation and our place in it, that’s a great starting point and important truth. All things are interconnected.
This interconnection “roots” in having the same Creator. As we read through Genesis 1 the lyrics of the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” come to mind, “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small; All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.”
The six days of Creation portrayed in Genesis 1 is a grand “symphony” of God’s creative handiwork on display. God makes day and night, heaven and earth, land and sea, sun and moon, birds and fish, animals and humans. These are not all separate creations. They are part of one great creation of God.
God not only brings all of this into being. At the same time God instills Creation with harmony and order, beauty and balance and inherent goodness. After each day God sees what God has made and it is “good”. At the end of six days, after all has been made, as God surveys all God’s handiwork, and it is “very good”!
As human beings we are a “capstone” in God’s creation. We are the only creatures of which it is said we are made “in the image of God”.
Even though we are set apart in that way, we are always a part of God’s creation. We are always connected with all of God’s other creatures because we have the same Creator.
Carrying this distinctive “image” we have a distinctive responsibility in Creation. Just as God made all things good. We are to keep them good. We are not owners, but we are stewards of God’s creation.
This Scripture outlines our responsibility as making sure all the rest of creation “thrives”. Right now so much of the emphasis is on saving the environment, helping the world to survive. The Biblical focus is on our roll of nurturing and nourishing the blessings of harmony, order, beauty, balance and goodness in the world around us. Our stewardship goes way beyond survival.
This is a huge undertaking. Sometimes it seems overwhelming. But we can “start right” in small and significant ways to each do our part.
The great hymn goes, “For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the sky, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies, Lord of all to Thee we raise, this our hymn of grateful praise.” It is a blessing to sing that hymn, but, even more, to know we are stewards of that goodness.
God makes it good. We keep it good. All to God’s glory!
These are my thoughts for Sunday.
What are yours?
This Sunday you will have a special treat. I will not be preaching this sermon. I’m out on vacation and Reverend Kenny Dickson will be filling in. He’ll be following the same theme, working from the same text and a supplemental Scripture. It will be “fun” is to see how two preachers approach the same text differently. The great thing is that God speaks a word of truth through each message.
And God speaks a word of truth through your message too! I always encourage you, even if you’re not the “preacher of the week”, to write down your sermon. It’s a special truth God is showing you!
In the blessing of God’s Word and your witness, I’ll let you get to work. I’ll be with you on Saturday to prepare with prayer for Sunday in the Pastor’s Workshop.
Prayer: Gracious God, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for how Your Word inspires our words. Thank You for Your Creating Word that brought all Creation into being. Thank You for what You will bring into being through our words. Lord, thank You even as You make all things good, You invite us to come alongside You and care for Your creation. In that responsibility and blessing we give You thanks and lift up this prayer in Jesus’ name.