When God gives a good blessing, it comes with the responsibility (duty/obligation) of taking care of it. God gave us the indescribably wonderful blessing of our home planet earth with its natural environment. To be responsible with a blessing from God means to take care of it. If we don’t take care of our blessings, God will take them away ….
Hello Readers, hope all’s well.
Today it’s time for another post, but I’m starting up a new series on this blog. Today is the first post in the series.
My new series is called: Natural Wisdom. It’s all about the Spiritual lessons and Christian insights to be gained from nature, caring for nature, and working in nature. Working on the land and caring for it is a very Spiritual activity and a good way to get close to God. God teaches us many things through nature. And I hope to learn as many of those lessons as I can.
I wanted to title this series Wisdom of Wilderness, but that’s the copyrighted title of a book by Gerald May, an excellent Christian author. I have that book in my reading queue, and will read it soon as I can (many books are in front of it in line). Another title I thought of was Wilderness Wisdom, but that was too close to the first one.
Anyway, moving on. I’ve written a few posts before on Christian lessons I’ve learned by gardening. God teaches us a lot through nature, and gardening. You can check out some of those other posts, like Consider the ‘Lowly’ Ant and Reasons for Rain. And there are more posts too, going even further back on my blog’s timeline.
The reason I’m starting this series now is that this year, 2022, I’ve kicked into overdrive when it comes to working on my land. This year I plan to go beyond gardening, and move into the realm of small-scale farming. But before I can get there, I have to work the land I live on, and that’s the stage I’m at right now. It’s OK to think ahead, but we have to deal with the stage we’re at now.
As I said above, nature is very Spiritual and working on the land is an extremely Spiritual activity. If you don’t have a strong relationship with your Creator, you will after working the land for awhile!! The longer we spend time in nature, the more lessons God teaches us. And that is the basis for this new series.
Most of these posts will be on the short side, I think, but we’ll see. Hope you all enjoy the new series.
Treat it Right or Lose it Forever
Today’s post, the first post in Natural Wisdom, is about our duty to take care of nature and our environment. That duty is one of the reasons (but not the only reason) I’ve gone into overdrive working on my land this year.
You hear a lot of people these days saying “there’s no planet B” in the context of saving our environment. Well, they’re right of course. What other planet could the human race go to, if we mess this one up beyond repair?? It’s suicidal as a species to destroy our own home.
Most of the worst pollution comes from corporations (industry) and national/governmental level entities. The average person doesn’t bear most of the guilt for the planetary destruction. Still, it’s always sad to see when individuals have complete disregard or even contempt for the natural environment.
How does one even have an attitude of contempt for the natural environment?? People with this attitude surely don’t fear the LORD in their true heart of hearts. If they did fear the LORD, they would respect, value, and care for the natural environment because God created it, said it was good, and gave it to us.
It’s incomprehensibly irresponsible for us to mess our own planet up the way we humans do. God gave us this planet, and He gave us the natural environment to provide for all our food, clothing, and shelter needs. But when God gives a good blessing, it comes with the responsibility (duty/obligation) of taking care of it. We can’t treat it like it doesn’t matter, because that’s disrespectful to God and to the blessings He provides. We can’t take it for granted either, as if it will always be there. If we don’t take care of our blessing, one day we’ll wake up to find it isn’t there. In the context of our planet’s environment, this means one day we’ll wake up to see the natural destruction has passed a point of no return, and there’s no more hope for the planet’s recovery. And after that, we’re doomed.
When God gives a good blessing, it comes with the responsibility (duty/obligation) of taking care of it. God gave us the indescribably wonderful blessing of our home planet earth with its natural environment. To be responsible with a blessing from God means to take care of it. If we don’t take care of our blessings, God will take them away ….
In Genesis 2, when God created Adam, He placed Adam in the Garden. God blessed Adam (humanity) with the Garden and all the different fruit trees (etc.) of the earth. But part of the arrangement here was that Adam (humanity) would farm the land and take care of it. This is Genesis 2:15, according to the CEB Bible translation that I prefer.
(7) the LORD God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life. […] (15) The LORD God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it.
Genesis 2:7, 15 (CEB)
It’s Simple: Care for what God Gives
Look, at the end of the day, it’s very simple. When God gives us something, it’s our duty to respect and value it, in Gratitude. In the case of nature, “respect” and “value” mean taking care of our environment. We have to take care of it because God gave it to us, for our benefit.
If God sees we don’t respect or value a blessing He gave us, He will take it away as I keep saying. This applies to a Christian marriage, a Christian ministry, other kinds of careers God blesses us with … … and on and on. You get the point. But why is this?? Does He take it away purely as punishment?? Part of the reason may be punishment, but that’s not all ….
What God gives us is good!! Whether it’s food, our physical health, our job, or our natural environment; whatever it is, when it comes from God it is good. And because it’s good, and because it comes from God, we must respect and value it by taking care of it, which shows the proper Gratitude to God for what we’ve been given.
So it’s more basic than “take care of this so we don’t lose it.” We take care of it because that’s what it deserves since it’s a blessing from God. So doesn’t the natural environment of this planet, our home, deserve the utmost respect?? Because if we lose this blessing … … things don’t look good for us.
For more on valuing what God gives us, check out #shorts Part 28—The Sin of Waste.
That’s it for Natural Wisdom Part 1. I hope you enjoy my new series!! Please leave a comment below with your thoughts.
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