It’s Spring, Time to Venture into the Great Outdoors
April 28, 2009
I was walking along the Bull Run-Occoquan Trail in Northern Virginia this weekend and all around me I was surrounded by miles and miles of bluebells and two themes stuck with me. In the height of spring there is a real and genuine renewal of creation. Yes, it is still under the fall but there is a beauty and consistency that comes with spring. It is a poor foreshadow of new life, but it is glorious and delightful all the same. It makes you realize how we have underestimated the glory and beauty of Christ when we hardly can even appreciate the creation that was made for him and by him.
I came back from this joyous weekend and was struck by something else. We often think of the Garden of Eden story as man centered, which in many contexts is very appropriate. Here’s what I mean by that though. When we think of being in the garden with God we think about us and maybe we think about God but mostly we think about us. We try and grasp and grapple with what a state of perfection, a state free of sin must have been like. As well we should, but we are missing something truly awe inspiring about our Lord.
God planted the garden.
- “When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:5-8).
The Lord prepared a place for us to live and thrive. He prepared a garden and was its perfect care taker. He made us in his image and said here steward in my place. Take dominion. Rule as I would rule and let’s see what happens. The tragedy is that we’ve made a mess of it not by our industriousness or creativity but by our selfishness our inward bent. God banished us from the garden and cursed the land.
And in our sin, we have tried to fill our hearts with the bounty of this earth and have left the creation burdened, groaning with us in our bondage to sin.
Thank God, Christ came. The Lord Jesus Christ who is suffient to save. God has given us every blessing and spiritual gift in Christ Jesus. He is our sufficiency our righteousness.
If you want to be a good steward, look to Christ. If you want to tend creation, look to Christ for their the lusts and sins of our inner heart will be exposed. Sit at his feet let him teach you and show you a new His intention for all that he has made.
Flourish 2009 (May 13-15, 2009)
April 24, 2009
Flourish™, (May13-15, 2009) a national conference for pastors and church leaders, is an invitation to one of culture’s most exciting conversations: creation care. Our goal is to explore the biblical call to care for God’s creation through the teachings of today’s most insightful church leaders.
Don’t miss your chance register this weekend. Click here to register.
Sponsors and Exhibitors:
The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Restoring Eden / Creation Care Study Program
National Association of Evangelicals
Floresta
Care of Creation Inc.
Evangelical Environmental Network
Creation Care magazine
Regent University School of Divinity
American Scientific Affiliation
David Cook Publishers
Tyndale House Publishers
Restoring Eden in Your Backyard
April 24, 2009
by Nancy Sleeth
If I can learn to garden, anyone can.
I grew up in the suburbs. Every spring, I helped my mom plant annuals—petunias in our sunny beds, impatiens in the shade, and a few geraniums in planters. One of my chores was to deadhead the flowers—especially the petunias. Pinching back the dead blooms and leggy stems always left a sticky residue on the tips of my fingers, and the smell of summer under my fingernails.
In early summer, my dad had a load of steaming mulch dumped in our driveway. It was the children’s job to shovel the mulch into the wheelbarrow and spread it evenly around the trees and bushes. I know that everything looks bigger to a youngster’s eyes, but that pile of mulch seemed endless. When we finally scraped up the last shovelful, our yard looked perfect, but I was too tuckered out to play.
By the time I was twelve or thirteen, I discovered a way to avoid most outdoor work. Mom would rather weed in the sunshine than be tied to the kitchen. So I traded outside chores for fixing dinner. I wish I could say that my motives were altruistic, but the truth is that I enjoyed cooking infinitely more than mowing and raking.
I was twenty years old when Matthew and I married—by then skillful in the kitchen, but still with no desire to be a gardener. For the first seven years of our marriage, we mostly lived in apartments where gardening was not an option anyway.
My attitude adjustment occurred during Matthew’s residency, when each family was provided with a modest house to live in for three years. Our next-door neighbors had been raised in a Mennonite farming community. Thinking it would be fun to grow some of our own food with our young children, we decided to start a garden together—they would share their knowledge, and I would weed and water.
The house we were assigned already had a small garden plot adjacent to the garage. I planted easy-to-grow carrots, tomatoes, radishes, and peas—not enough to feed a family, but the look on Clark’s face when he pulled up his first carrot was payment enough for my meager effort. Later we added corn and squash in my neighbor’s plot. Growing food fit my frugal nature, and it got me out of the house. I was hooked.
After Matthew finished his residency, we moved to northern New England. Although the growing season there is short, people plant magnificent perennial gardens. Thanks to generous neighbors who offered to give me divisions from their plants, I was able to plant a spring-to-fall succession of blooms—bluets, violets, and bleeding hearts in spring, followed by hostas, daisies, lilies, bee balm, peonies, and black-eyed Susans, culminating in our annual first-day-of-school photograph in front of the lavishly blooming rose of Sharon.
Learning to work with perennials saved me money—most were free clippings from my neighbors, or inexpensive divisions from the yearly school fund-raiser plant sales—and kept many dozens of throwaway plastic plant containers out of the landfill. Next to my vegetable garden, I planted blueberry bushes and a small orchard of apple and pear trees. Our next-door neighbor told Emma that eating a lot of blueberries helped keep her eyes blue. Emma believed him, so we always saved blueberries to harvest on her August birthday.
The biggest shift in my gardening practices, however, came when we built our house in New Hampshire. I went totally native. Instead of planting grass, I sowed two-thirds of an acre with wildflower seed. The field thrived and attracted wildlife—birds, fox, deer, wild turkeys . . . and tourists. Strangers stopped to ask if they could photograph and paint the field. Neighbors were invited to pick bouquets. Churches used our wildflowers for special occasions.
As a housewarming present, two friends helped us construct raised beds for my vegetable garden. The vegetable garden was so successful the first summer that we decided to double it in size the next, and double it again the next. By the third year, we were growing enough potatoes, carrots, onions, and tomatoes to last year-round. Clark and Emma often weeded with me in the cool stillness of early morning. Matthew used our pressure cooker to can our bounty. It was a family enterprise.
In late winter, I started most of my plants indoors along the south windows of the house. Several neighbors and I bartered over successful seedlings; one summer I was on the receiving end of luscious and prolific yellow pear tomatoes. We were also fortunate to have a family-run organic nursery just up the road, so I could always grab a few plants to fill any gaps.
When we moved to Kentucky, one of my first priorities was preparing a small organic garden on the south side of our house. A friend of a friend donated a truckload of well-aged organic manure. We now use the garden for teaching college students basic gardening skills: how to prepare the earth with compost, rake out the beds, plant the seeds, water and weed, and—finally—harvest, cook, preserve, and feast. When I work with the students, sometimes I get the feeling that I’m an impostor—I still feel very much like an amateur gardener, with so much yet to learn.
Matthew’s family grew the majority of their vegetables, fruit, eggs, chicken, and milk for economic reasons. For a long while, gardening brought back not-so-fond memories for him—of picking potato bugs off plants and endless weeding wars. But recently, Matthew has happily joined me in the garden.
Come evening, when we work in comfortable silence among the rows, it feels like Paradise restored: just as God intended, husband and wife together, tending and caring for the Lord’s earthly garden.
Nancy Sleeth is the author of Go Green, $ave Green: a simple guide to saving time, money, and God’s green earth (www.gogreenthebook.com). She also serves as Program Director for Blessedd Earth (www.blessedearth.org).
Earth Day, A Time to Sow
April 22, 2009
Here at the Evangelical Environmental Network we celebrate Creation Sunday. Over the past several decades many churches have begun to celebrate the gift of God’s creation on the Sunday that falls closest to Earth Day, which is always on April 22. This once a year emphasis we call Creation Sunday. We encourage churches to celebrate Creation Sunday when it best suits their circumstances. (For 2009 we are suggesting April 26.)
This year’s theme is a “A Time to Sow.” On this Earth Day 2009, it is a day to focus our attention back on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ never fails to reap what he has sown. For, “light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart” (Psalm 97:11). In your creation care ministry now is the time to sow, to prepare and till the ground. Now is the time to take first steps, engage others, spend time in what the Lord has made, take care of your own stewardship, learn about the impacts of environmental degradation on the least among us. Start somewhere and fear not for the Lord is with you!
According to Jesus the true “sower sows the word” (Mark 4:14). And so our celebration of Creation Sunday must begin with an understanding of how the Lord would have us sow and build.
We find in 1 Corinthians 4:5-8 that Paul exhorts us to prepare our sowing and building carefully “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to has labor.” And later in the same chapter “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone build on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay stray– each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, buy only as through fire.” We build on the foundation that Christ has laid. Work that supports the foundation, materials that the foundation can hold are the only materials to be used, for any others will not do.
So as you look to sow and prepare the ground be careful to only sow the word the gives you live. Be careful to only sow those items that bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a warning to not sow, but to sow carefully, for we sow discord and the seeds of death in our current stewardship of creation, now it is time for us to sow the seeds of life. To tend and till as Christ would have us tend and till.
So who shall we turn to? Only the Lord Christ who exhorts us to come to him all who are weary for he will give us rest. Christ is strong to save and strong to redeem our stewardship of creation. In Romans 8:19 we find that “the creation waits for eager expectation for the Sons of God to be revealed.”
So take some small steps, use this Creation Sunday to get back to the basics, return to Christ for he will not fail you.
2009 resources will be up soon. But resources from previous years can help you prepare as well. Click here for more information.
The Glory of God’s Nature, Brought to You by Walt Disney
April 21, 2009
“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” So rightly says the Psalmist. “Earth Day” is really a time to celebrate our Creator’s handiwork. Disney hopes you, and others who care about creation, will explore the great indoors this April 22nd when the studio re-enters the world of nature films after a several decade hiatus. And earth is certainly worth a spin.
Beginning near the North Pole as a polar bear family emerges from its den, the film moves over the course of a year down through temperate forests and over the Himalayas to the tropics and savannahs of Africa before we follow whales to the frozen south seas. Featuring the most spectacular images from the BBC/Discovery Channel mini-series planet earth, Disney’s greatest hits version also adds the incomparable voice of James Earl Jones reading a script targeting a pre-teen demographic.
Unlike March of the Penguins, which benefited from a tight focus that let the story build, earth simply jumps from one spectacular shot to the next. It is big pictures with a big score. It is not great story telling, but kids will likely come out with a story to tell—whether it be a 9 year old boy blown away by the super slow-mo of a great white shark hunting seals, or a 10 year old girl who can’t stop talking about how cute all the baby animals were.
Adults too will likely be impressed by the amazing time lapse sequences that follow plant growth and seasonal change in amazing high definition. Also, shots taken of great animal migrations from a high above provide a sense of scale that is impossible to capture otherwise. Through it all, the unifying message is generally subtle: on our beautiful planet life moves through well ordered cycles and seasons, and it is an intelligent design that we tinker with at some peril.
Disney marketers are courting the Christian creation care community, and with good reason. Though no scripture is read, and a few loose lines might rub believers the wrong way, overall the Creator’s Book of Nature is vividly on display. As David wrote hundreds of years ago (and it remains true today):
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
(Psalm 19:1-3)
That creation looks to us to steward it for the glory of our Father. As an awe inspiring dawn shot unfolds, James Earl Jones intones, “Every living thing is waiting.” Indeed, as Paul reminds us, “the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.” (Romans 8:21)
At times earth tries too hard. Less likely would have produced more satisfied audiences, but given the wealth of amazing footage that it took five years to collect, it is understandable that the producers could not resist adding just one more vignette from another part of the planet.
While cubs and ducklings are used to full effect, parents should be aware that predation is also shown. The lion has not yet laid down with the lamb, and that sad fact is documented in graphic, but not gruesome, detail.
Despite its ambitious title, earth probably will not change the world. Yet, it just might jump start a generation plagued by what some have labeled videophilia to put down the video games and explore the reality of nature. Let’s hope so. The kids of today, for better or worse, will be the stewards of tomorrow. Disney is to be commended for this effort to introduce them to the fullness of the earth they will tend.
John Murdock is a natural resources attorney in Washington D.C. You can read his blog at http://republicantreehugger.blogspot.com
Serving Hands for a Fallen Creation (Renewal Day of Service)
April 20, 2009
This is an announcement from Renewal: Students Caring for Creation. To find out how you can participate click here.
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Renewal: Students Caring for Creation invites you
to join us on April 22nd, 2009
for the National Day of Service for God’s Creation.
On this day, Christian campuses, churches and communities across North America will join together and get our hands dirty working for the renewal of God’s creation. We hope this event will inspire your campuses and communities to live more intentionally for Christ through the care of God’s creation.
Reflecting on how Jesus lived simply and intentionally inspired our theme for this year, “Serving Hands for a Fallen Creation.” Jesus seeks to love, bless, and renew people, land, and communities. On April 22nd, we’re asking you to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. We encourage you to not only be conscious of how your choices impact the world on this day, but also choose to actively bless God’s creation through participating in a creation care service activity.
What would it be like on your campus if everyone committed to live one day like Jesus? To make a conscious, focused effort to live humbly and lovingly. To use only what we need- no excess. To actively demonstrate love. To participate in servant-leadership. To act with kindness. To work for the renewal of God’s creation, through taking a day- or an hour- to care for it.
One day living like this could change the world! So join the movement, and organize a Day of Service for God’s Creation for your campus or community!
The possibilities for service projects and activities are endless! Some schools are integrating their Day of Service events into a pre-existing Earth Day celebration. Some are holding a service project over the weekend (April 24th-26th), and others are organizing a weeklong creation care focus on their campuses in and around the 22nd. Be creative and get other people excited about this wonderful opportunity!
Flourish 2009
April 17, 2009
Flourish™, a national conference for pastors and church leaders, is an invitation to one of culture’s most exciting conversations: creation care. Our goal is to explore the biblical call to care for God’s creation through the teachings of today’s most insightful church leaders.
As the first national gathering of its kind, Flourish will focus on what is necessary for the church to produce a robust Gospel-witness on the creation. This includes creation care theology, worship and evangelism, stewardship of church buildings, and personal discipleship. So sign up now. You don’t want to miss this revolutionary event!
Take advantage of special early bird pricing (until April 17, 2009). And, if you are part of a group from the same church or organization, use the discount code “flourish50? to take advantage of a special group discount!
Click here to register.
Sponsors and Exhibitors:
The Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Restoring Eden / Creation Care Study Program
National Association of Evangelicals
Floresta
Care of Creation Inc.
Evangelical Environmental Network
Creation Care magazine
Regent University School of Divinity
American Scientific Affiliation
David Cook Publishers
Tyndale House Publishers
A Broken Promise
April 16, 2009
1996 Atlanta Olympics links asthma attacks and air pollution
Two decades ago, I took care of a young asthmatic girl in the emergency room. It was a hot summer day, and Etta was having a severe asthma attack. I promised her that I would not let her die.
Etta was not my first asthma patient, nor would she be my last. In the last twenty years, asthma rates among children under age four have more than doubled. Ask any school kid today if he or one of his classmates has asthma, and the answer will be “yes.” Poor kids are hardest hit: a recent study indicates that one-quarter of children in Harlem have asthma, more than three times the national average.
One reason for this increase in childhood asthma is air pollution, especially in inner cities. Numerous studies have demonstrated that asthma admissions to hospitals increase as the ground level ozone and particulate matter rises. That’s why we have “ozone alerts,” which warn susceptible inner city children and the elderly to stay inside on hot, muggy days.
But what would happen if ground level ozone levels were reduced? Would acute asthma events also decrease? The 1996 Olympic Games held in Atlanta provided a unique opportunity to study this question.
To reduce traffic congestion during the Olympic games, the city of Atlanta closed the downtown area to car traffic; increased access to public transportation through additional buses and trains; and promoted flexible work schedules, car-pooling, and telecommuting for Atlanta workers. The result: for seventeen days, peak daily ozone concentrations decreased 28 percent. Concurrently, acute asthma events dropped as much as 44 percent. Atlanta’s inner-city children on Medicaid seemed to benefit the most, showing a more than 40 percent decrease in asthma-related emergency room visits.
After the Olympics when Atlanta traffic patterns returned to normal, asthma visits and admissions shot right back up to former levels.
On that hot summer day in an inner city emergency room, I was not able to keep my promise to Etta—she was killed by an asthma attack exacerbated by air pollution. But I am trying to keep my promise to God. He wants everyone to have access to clean air. Riding a bike, taking the subway, and carpooling are ways we can all demonstrate our love for the Creator, his creation, and all our global neighbors.
Matthew Sleeth, MD, is author of Serve God, Save the Planet (Zondervan 2007) and Executive Director of Blessed Earth (www.blessed-earth.org)
Easter with Rick Warren
April 15, 2009
This Holy Weekend, Fox News broadcast “Easter with Rick Warren.” Pastor Warren delivered a sweeping version of salvation history to hundreds of thousands of viewers. That’s a good thing.
The sermon was quite solid, but I’d like our new national pastor to re-examine the fate of the Earth.
He referred to
(1) the goodness of God’s creation (check);
(2) the fact that sin has produced a “broken planet” (check);
(3) Warren noted the biblical “groaning” of creation (check);
(4) Jesus’s life, death, and most importantly resurrection was described as a turning point in history (big check);
but while Pastor Rick wanted his audience to know that God has eternal plans for them, he said that God “does not have long range plans for the Earth” (hold the phone!).
Now most of his major points were presented with some biblical backup blasted onto the TV screen, but this statement was scripture-less. Admittedly, it was a passing reference as his major theme was the salvation history for mankind. Throw-away line or not, the Earth is a pretty big thing to literally throw away without a verse.
Ironically, shortly after making the statement, Warren quoted Romans 8: 19 – 21 and put it up on the screen
Romans 8:19-21 (New Living Translation)
19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.
To my ears, that sounds like a pretty good long term plan for the Earth and all the rest of creation. And the last time I checked, the “world” (kosmos in Greek) that God so loved and sent his Son to save includes more than just homo sapiens.
Warren later emphasized the coming new heaven and new earth. This is true and good news. But, as some wise person said [unfortunately, I can't remember who]: “Jesus said ‘I make all things new’ not ‘I make all new things.’” (See Revelation 21:5)
Romans 8:21 suggests that the future of creation is similar to the future of our bodies. Yes, our bodies are flawed, damaged by sin, and will temporarily decay with the passing of time after our death. But our resurrection, like that of Christ, will be a bodily resurrection. As with Christ, we will have a new, better form—but it will still be a form.
Christ was recognizable and very much physical. He was not, and we will not be, amorphous spirits, life-forces, or drops that simply joins the ocean of the universe. My resurrected body will still have a relationship to my body of today. Likewise, the new earth will still have elements of the present earth. How all this works in practice is indeed a grand mystery, but it seems quite clear that we and all of creation are not headed for nothingness.
If Warren had a verse in mind when he declared there are “no long range plans” for the earth, it might have been II Peter 3:10. However, that text is probably best read not as an annihilating blaze, but as a refining fire that exposes the earth’s true essence minus its impurities.
N.T. Wright was on to something when he told Christianity Today the following:
CT: How does the doctrine of the resurrection affirm the goodness of creation?
NT: This absolutely central. In both the Jewish circles where resurrection was firmly believed, moving on towards the rabbis, and in early Christianity, both in the New Testament and in the second-century fathers, where you get resurrection, it goes very closely with two things—a doctrine of the goodness of creation and a doctrine of the justice and ultimate judgment of God. Judgment is not just negative, but also positive. Judgment is God’s putting the world to rights.
If death is the dissolution of this body, never to be reassembled, then death has succeeded in saying present creation is bad and is going to be abandoned. But resurrection says, No. Present creation is good. It is corruptible and transient, not least because of sin, but God, having dealt with sin in the cross of Jesus Christ, will deal with corruption. And the result therefore must be the reaffirmation of the good creation, including the reaffirmation of human bodies.
(More on these themes here.)
The good news is that even if Rick Warren thinks the Earth won’t be sticking around, he is still on board with taking care of it in the here and now. As one of the most prominent signers of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, Warren took a bold and important stand on behalf of God’s creation. His Saddleback Church is taking other steps to improve their stewardship as well.
The even better news is that Warren’s good works today might actually have lasting significance. When we pray “thy will be done on earth” and when we let God work through us to answer that prayer, something real is happening.
Undoubtedly, the work will not be finished until Christ comes again, but introducing people to Jesus now, seeking justice now, caring for the sick now, feeding the hungry now, protecting the creatures God created from extinction now, and generally alleviating creation’s groaning now are not just ways that we “play house” before leaving for our true spiritual home.
No, this is our real home, set for a major remodeling in the future, but part of that future is now. The good news is that God has long range plans to which all of creation can indeed look forward joyfully.
This weekend, I wrote a check to an environmental organization working to save a particularly wonderful piece of creation. In the memo line I wrote, “Easter—Good news for all creation!” I believe that. And I believe that the work we do to care for creation does indeed, in ways I do not fully understand, have eternal value.
John Murdock is a natural resources attorney in Washington D.C. You can read his blog at http://republicantreehugger.blogspot.com
The Most Important Creation Care Message
April 12, 2009
The Lord is Risen, He is Risen indeed!!
