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Caring For Creation
Awareness, Appreciation, Stewardship

Confronted with the scientific evidence of creation's degradation, and the Biblical principles that call us to care for creation, we find ourselves asking: What Must We Do?

The simple, yet profound, response to this question appears to be this: Love God as Redeemer and Creator, acknowledge God's love for the world, be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and act upon this by following Jesus who creates, upholds, and reconciles all things(Col 1:15-20; John 1:1-5).

But there is a serious problem: Most people today have been alienated from the Creator and God's Creation, and thus it is difficult to love, uphold, and make right again a world that we really do not know. Thus many will have first to become aware of Creation and its God-declared goodness. Once awareness has been gained, we then can move to appreciation, and from appreciation on to stewardship.

Here is a helpful framework:

• Awareness (seeing, identifying, naming, locating),
• Appreciation (tolerating, respecting, valuing, esteeming, cherishing), and
• Stewardship (using, restoring, serving, keeping, entrusting).

AWARENESS

Awareness stands at the very beginning as the first of three components of Creation stewardship. Awareness means bringing things to our attention. When so much calls for our attention-- foreign affairs, local politics, jobs, traffic, accreditation, grades -- the Creation in its natural aspects may not even seem real to us. We might find that it seems real only on some of our travels, and even then it may be seriously obscured by motel rooms, conference halls, ubiquitous television, and campground smog. We must consciously make ourselves aware of what is happening in God's Creation.

Awareness involves seeing, naming, identifying, locating. It means taking off the blinders provided us by ourselves and society so that we not only see God's Creation, but want to name and know the names of the things we see. It means providing ourselves with enough peace and thoughtfulness that we have the time and the will to identify a tree or mountain, bird or river. It means having the sense to enter the natural world intentionally in order to locate and find God's creatures about which we sing each week in the doxology, "Praise God all creatures here below."

APPRECIATION

Awareness is not an end in itself. From awareness comes appreciation; we cannot appreciate that of which we are unaware. At the very least, appreciation means tolerating. We may tolerate, for example, worms and hyenas and so doing appreciate them. But beyond toleration, appreciation can also mean respect. We certainly respect a large bear, but we can also develop respect for a lowly worm as we learn of its critical importance in Creation. And, appreciation can build from tolerating, to respecting, and on to valuing. We know that God declares Creation to be good, and we will find that God does so for good reason! As we become aware of the order of Creation, we will find ourselves imaging God's valuing of the creatures. And this will build even further until much of what we discover we will even esteem and cherish. Thus, awareness will lead to appreciation.

STEWARDSHIP

Appreciation does not end the matter either, for appreciation leads to its ultimate conclusion: stewardship. At first stewardship may mean use of Creation; perhaps our appreciation for a flower will lead us to put it into a vase to decorate our table. But stewardship will bring us well beyond appropriate use, to keeping what remains, and to restoring what has been abused in the past. The widespread lack of awareness and ignorance of Creation and Creation's integrity means that we and many others have abused and degraded the environment unknowingly, and stewardship means that we will work to set things right again-- to reconcile and redeem. We might even buy back something degraded to make it right again.

Beyond restoration, stewardship means serving. As we understand that God through Creation is in so many ways serving our own lives, we will return this service with our own. Our service will include a loving and caring keeping of what we hold in trust, providing the creatures their time of sabbath rests, and preserving Creation's fruitfulness. Ultimately our service in Creation will even involve entrusting others with what we have served, kept, and restored.

Christian environmental stewardship-- our loving care and keeping of Creation that mirror's God's love-- is a central, joyful, part of the human task. As communities of God's stewards-- as the Body of the One who made, sustains, and reconciles the world-- our churches and our lives can and must be convicting publications and vibrant testimonies that glorify and honor our Redeemer and Creator.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour, and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy will's sake they are, and have been created. (Rev 4:11 Geneva Bible)

For additional information and resources, contact:

e-mail: administration@ausable.org

Due to the closing of the Outreach Office in March, 2005, some resources may no longer be available.

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