As with many of you, Sunday school and Wednesday night children’s Bible classes always included the creation story. The figures placed on a felt board, the cutouts, and the coloring pages were mainstays of those 45-minute gatherings. If we could name what was created on what day, we would get to lick and stick a gold star on the poster by the door. I would have preferred a cookie, but whatever.
Those six days God worked were epic. Visuals of light, water, animals and trees and then man and woman. As the beloved song goes, I can only imagine.
Why, then, are we as people of this faith not more inclined to take care of this creation? Why are we so resistant to those who warn us about the damage being done to the earth by our lifestyles? Why are we resistant to working together across the globe to protect our planet for our children and grandchildren? This I do not understand.
One of Jesus’ tenets involved stewardship, “the ethical value that embodies the responsible planning andmanagementofresources” (Oxford Dictionary). The movements of sound environmentalism within our energy industries makes for a modern-day parable.
In Matthew’s telling of Jesus’s story, each of the three servants was given talents of gold “in proportion to their abilities.” Those of us living in this bountiful country would be akin to the servant who was given five talents. He invested and made five more. Stewardship, however, involves more than just making money from what we have been gifted.
OnehastowonderifGod is getting a return on his investment in us as stewards of earth’s resources.
We are not to be faulted for being the generations who have grown dependent on the system. We are, however, the humans of 2023 with all the intellectual, scientific, and technological tools to find the balance between free enterprise and environmental concerns. It would be beneficial if those with expertise in energy and the environment and economics would gather to chisel out common-sense solutions. Make the government/ politics fall in line with these solutions, not the other way around.
In the beginning, God created a beautiful world. Let’s not be the generation that witnesses its ending only because we did not use our “talents” to make it more sustainable.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
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