On the day I am writing this, the local newspaper has an article about
how much of the land and atmosphere is suffering. Hmmm. You don’t
suppose St. Paul saw that article, do you? In his letter to the
Romans, the apostle writes of how all of creation is groaning and how
it is in the bondager of decay (Romans 8:21-22). That sounds a lot
like the twenty-first century!
Moses heard God addressing the same problem. In Leviticus 25, Moses
records what God sees as the way forward. The animals and the crops
will be sufficient if you give creation a rest from time to time.
(Now, here is a brief side trip from our study of Leviticus. Isn’t it
interesting, even encouraging, that so much of the biblical material
deals with real life situation? These passages speak about how to
preserve holy living, even while getting enough to eat. The spiritual
and the practical come together! The divine and the human walk the
same streets! The Scriptures and the Internet roam the same earth!)
As I write this, I look out my study windows. In every direction, I
see tress and plants. I remember when we were making plans to build
this house. My beloved late wife Toni made a suggestion. “Why don’t
we build it in the sky and lower it in by helicopter, so we don’t have
to cut down any of these trees to make room for the house?” The
contractor who would build the house joined Toni and me in laughing,
but when I look out the window, I see towering evidence of trees that
were left, a stream still rippling, and a narrow lawn that saved a few
trees.
In 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 (When was the last time you turned to 2
Chronicles!), there is a report that the exile of the Israelites after
the fall of Jerusalem lasted for seventy years. That was to make up
for unobserved sabbaths and it took seventy years to do it. The way
in which the Sabbath was observed varied, but the rhythm of work and
rest was (and still is) God’s wish for creation.
What Someone Else Has Said:
In Methodism in the American Forest (Oxford), Russell Richey quotes John Wesley: “As all the blessings of God in paradise flowed through man to the inferior creatures; as man was the great channel of communication between the Creator and the whole brute creation; so when man made himself incapable of transmitting those blessings, that communication was necessarily cut off...And then it was that “the creature,’ every creature was subject to vanity, to sorrow, to pain of every kind, in all manner of evils.”
Prayer:
As you prepare this lesson, let your prayer begin: “Forgive
me, Lord, for the ways I have abused Your creation...”
