Easter Devotional - Day 11

"In fact, all creation is eagerly awaiting for God to show who his children are. Meanwhile, creation is confused, but not because it wants to be confused. God made it this way in the hope that creation would be set free from decay and would share in the glorious freedom of his children. We know that all creation is still groaning and is in pain, like a woman about to give birth." Romans 8:19-22

Paul was talking about redemption, not environmentalism. Paul was discussing issues of sin, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God. Paul was talking about the lengths to which God has gone to bring us into relationship with God and one another. He was talking about the effects of sin on our lives and relationships. He understood as well, that sin impacts the very world in which we live.

This was not a radical concept in Paul's day. The nations all around understood that sin was a factor in the coming of rain or the beginning of a famine. They were attuned to the idea that sin could bring about a plague or a destructive storm. They understood that one must appease the gods of a given land in order for harvest time to come with a bounty. They understood that life was a cohesive whole, in which sin played a part in what we today call the natural world.

For Paul, there was no distinction between the spiritual and the secular. That is a modern concept that we have invented. It is an American invention, this distinction between the secular and the holy, the religious and the profane. In earlier days, it was just considered life. There was an understanding that life was a balance in which sin and one's relationship with the divine played an important role. We have somehow, lost that understanding in our American experiment.

In our secular society, today is Earth Day. We are called to consider the needs of the physical world in which we live—the environment with its multi-faceted forms of life and balance of structures that allow for life to continue. For some in the church, this is too secular a notion. For Paul, it is part of the demands of faith to heed how our sinfulness and rejection of God impacts not only our individual eternity, but life on earth in its myriad forms.

We might point today to the greed which drove Portuguese explorers to level the vast majority of the Brazilian rainforests five hundred years ago. We can see how greed destroys and reshapes the world around us. We might also look to the arrogance of the East India Company of ages gone by who enslaved a people in India into the production of poppy at the expense of fields once devoted to the food supply of a nation. We might look to oceanic overfishing which disturbs the balance of life, creating plagues of jellyfish where they were once controlled by the fish we now remove from the waters. We might look at our economic self-interests that continue to ignore the footprint we leave behind on God's creation.

All of creation awaits redemption. All life is in need of the restoration of God's purposes and design for life. Our own individual lives need redemption and restoration. The physical world around us needs restoration, as well—the kind that only we humans as stewards of God's world can support as we allow God to redeem the world through our actions of individual redemption and response.

Define how your habits should bend in response to the effects of sin on God's creation.

"Lord, help me to hear the groans of your creation and participate in your goal of redemption."


—©Copyright 2009 Christopher B. Harbin

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