Rend Your Heart, by Jan Richardson

Day 23 : Creation Care

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. – Isaiah 58:10,11

Today, we get to soak in scripture which tells us the story.

In the middle of this beautiful Isaiah 58 True Fasting passage, the prophet pauses to describe God’s vision for all of us as we pour ourselves out for the vulnerable. His description is dramatic and physical. He speaks hope where there is despair and brokenness of “a sun-scorched land.” Our frame, our bodies, will be strengthened? We might get to be like well-watered gardens? What?! Like a spring whose waters never fail? That could be us? Yes, that could be us as we step more fully into this kingdom of God that contends for the flourishing of all.

God never leaves us to ourselves to figure out his ways. He is kindly holding our hands and describes what shalom is and what not-shalom is. He is realistic and the writers of scripture are writing out of grit, famine, war, death, droughts, oppression. Never will the words of biblical hope be coming from a pollyanna lens that doesn’t account for real suffering and a world that is very seriously broken. 

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all.

Job 12:7-9

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.

Psalm 26:11-12

Cared-for creation and even damaged creation, is speaking of God’s love and ways all the time, revealing something about him and his methods that he so beautifully embedded in the code of the natural world.

God's call to us in Genesis is to: Tend it. Watch over it. These are words associated with nurture and cultivation, gardening, concern and protection. God does want us to care for his creation.

The earth mourns and dries up, and the land wastes away and withers.

Even the greatest people on earth waste away.

The earth suffers for the sins of its people, for they have twisted God’s instructions, violated his laws, and broken his everlasting covenant.

Isaiah 24:4,5

Isaiah 24:5, above, says that the earth suffers for the sins of its people.  Rather than caring for God's creation as he has asked us to do, we have sinned in ways that cause the earth to suffer.  This language is direct and convicting. 

You may be wondering what creation care has to do with the vulnerable, the marginalized, the poor.  They are all connected, and this week, we will explore and learn more about those connections.  To give you a sneak preview, consider this:

  • the people of Flint, Michigan, without clean drinking water

  • those who were left homeless after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans

  • monocultural over-farming of the US Great Plains, which caused the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and created 2.5 million displaced migrants  

When the earth suffers, it causes God's human creation to suffer, too.  Read the passage from Romans 8 below, and consider what it might mean for all creation to look forward to freedom from death and decay.

"For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse.

But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

Romans 8:19-22

When God created the world, he created a fabric of life and thriving where humans, men and women, lived in a shalom-relationship with land, sea, sky, forests, and all animals from tiny to huge. The natural created world nurtures us back by giving us water and food, shade and sunlight and oxygen. God’s vision of shalom is for all his creation to flourish in mutuality and for not one part to suffer, whether human or natural.

His magnum opus, women and men who image his character, are meant to contend for this vision. His people, the church, are called to hold this vision high and to work diligently toward it for the glory of God.

Enjoy this video of the Creation story, from The Jesus Storybook Bible: a beautiful imagining of God's delight in and love for his creation.