A few weeks ago the famed English astro-physicist, Stephen Hawking, certainly grabbed the headlines! On his new TV show, “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking,” this brilliant scientist issued a warning that earth inhabitants ought to avoid making contact with intelligent aliens in the universe. You may recall that there have been numerous scientific efforts—such as the SETI project (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)—that have attempted to communicate with intelligent life forms elsewhere in our universe. While thus far these attempts have not succeeded, Hawkings warned that such efforts could initiate an unwelcomed visit to Earth by extraterrestrials. “Hawkings speculated that such aliens would likely be nomads, living in ships after sucking their own planet dry of resources, and hopping from one interstellar refueling station to the next,” (according to www.physorg.com, a popular science website). “‘If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans,’” he speculated on his show. And with that the scientific community was abuzz, leading the Journal of Cosmology to compile dozens of responses from Hawking’s peers.
But what does it matter? Consider these reflections. First of all, I find it amazing that a bright 21st century mind believes that there are intelligent aliens out there somewhere who one day might visit us. While I’ve happened to believe that to be true all my life (after all, angels are classic extra-terrestrial intelligences, are they not?), to hear such a confession from one who works outside the faith community is refreshing, to say the least. Secondly, one could certainly suppose that sufficient “scientific” support for extra-terrestrial aliens would effectively condition humanity for the appearance one day of intelligent beings, purporting to have received our communiqués and now visiting our home planet in order to “assist” us in our own survival efforts (the BP oil spill could use some help!). Adding credence to the heretofore sci-fi craziness of backwoods UFO proponents could play into an intelligent mind’s strategy to one day dupe the human race. That notion is hardly any crazier than Hawking’s suggestion, is it?
So maybe all of this isn’t about craziness, but timeliness. Maybe it’s one more link in an anaconda-like chain that is tightening its squeeze on the human race. And maybe the intelligent aliens that the Bible calls angels—both good and evil angels—really are streaming unseen to Earth, hurriedly preparing this race for a final cosmic showdown between the forces of the fallen rebel angel and the forces of Christ, the Eternal—a blitzkrieg played out in the lives of all of us earth inhabitants.
Were that true, then the gathering in just a few hours in Atlanta of representatives and leaders of this global community of faith would be much more than just another quinquennial business session of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. About such a business session back in 1901 this observation was made: “Who do you suppose has been among us since this Conference began? . . . Who has walked up and down the aisles of this Tabernacle?—The God of heaven and his angels. . . . They have been among us to work the works of God, to keep back the powers of darkness, that the work God designed should be done and should not be hindered. The angels of God have been working among us” (GCB 4-25-01). Intelligent extra-terrestrial visitors—unseen, unobserved—given the dramatically high stakes of this hour in history, will they not also be present in Atlanta? Then shall we not pray and pray and pray for God’s intervening guidance? For isn’t it now more than clear that intelligent minds far brighter than ours are laying plans for an endgame that may not be far away? Then O God, may “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Amen.
Pastors' Blog
By Pioneer Pastors
Perhaps the game was perfect after all. How can I let the hottest story in sports a week ago get by without at least a comment? If you’re not a baseball aficionado, let me set the story up first. The great American (and now international—I grew up in Japan playing it with Nipponese fervor) pastime of baseball is a game played over 9 innings, in which each team comes to bat once each inning and can remain at bat (swinging, hitting, missing the 90+ mph balls thrown at or near each batter by the pitcher) until the team accumulates three outs (a strikeout [three swings that missed], a hit that is caught or thrown to first base before the batter can race to the bag, or being forced out as a runner by a teammate’s hit ). Whew—this explanation business is more difficult than I thought—we should’ve gone into cricket instead (just kidding—really)! Anyway, the team that scores the most runs (one point per runner who circles the three bases and returns to home plate before the inning is over) wins. Still want to play?
Last week a young Detroit Tigers (that’s a team name) Venezuelan pitcher, Armando Galarraga, was on his way to the unthinkable. Pitching against the Cleveland Indians, Galarraga was pitching an absolutely perfect game—meaning, every Cleveland batter that stepped beside home plate to swing at his pitches struck out or hit into an out (on the ground or in the air). For nine innings Galarraga ruled the game! Not a single opposing batter was able to hit against him. Period. If he continued on that phenomenal streak, he would end up pitching a “perfect game”—27 batters up, 27 batters down (out) with no hits, no walks, no errors. A perfect game in baseball is so rare that it has only happened 20 times in baseball history, or on the average of once every 19,595 games! I.e., 28-year-old pitcher Galarraga was on his way to making history, very major baseball history. In fact, it all came down to the 27th batter—get him out—and Galarraga has his perfect game. And sure enough, the batter hits a fast groundball between first and second base, the first baseman runs to snag the hit, Galarraga instinctively races to first base to catch the first baseman’s throw—for an easy out—and a perfect game—and history forever! When suddenly first base umpire Jim Joyce threw his arms sideways, indicating that the runner was safe. The stunned Detroit stadium erupted in boos, Detroit manager Jim Leyland raced across the field to protest the call, all the while TV screens across the nation replayed the throw, showing clearly that the runner was out and the perfect game was in fact perfect. But all to no avail. Umpire Joyce wouldn’t budge.
Until after the game when the umpire was shown a television replay of his botched call. The runner truly had been out—Joyce had made the wrong call, costing the young pitcher a place in immortalized baseball lore. And then it was that this story took a most unfamiliar turn. While the cameras are running, with tears and quivering lip the umpire sought out Galarraga and—can you believe it?—apologized to the pitcher for having made the wrong call. And wonder of wonders—with the cameras and microphones still running—instead of recrimination and blame, Galarraga graciously forgives the umpire and waves it off as an honest mistake. AP writer Ben Walker later opined: “Bad calls are part of the mix in sports . . . . But something about this one—the chance to right a wrong, the heartfelt emotions of everyone involved—reached way past the lines. ‘I’ve got to say we’ll never see it again in our lifetime,’ New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.” Maybe not.
Look—I’m not a softy, but I’ll confess to eyes welled up as I listened to the heartbroken confession and the compassionate forgiveness of these two grown men. In a world so devoid of such transparency, what a gift. Maybe it really was a perfect game after all. For what could be a grander reflection of a grace divine than this display near the pitcher’s mound in baseball? When the God of heaven—who probably isn’t a baseball fan at all—moves upon the hearts of his earth children and for a fleeting moment we see grace divine lived out in lives utterly human, there is something akin to perfection for while, isn’t there? May the poet W. H. Auden was right: “I know nothing, except what everyone knows—if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”
The USA Today headlines hanging on my hotel doorknob would catch anybody’s eye. In Fort Worth, Texas, Tuesday to conduct the funeral of our dear neighbor and friend, June Bascom, I read the banner: “World of troubles for US: Obama returns to the White House facing crises on three fronts.” Beneath it in three parallel columns, each of these crises was further headlined and reported: the ongoing calamity of BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the mounting tensions in the Korean peninsula; and the Israel-Palestine showdown over the thwarted Gaza aid flotilla this week. Three start-of-summer hot spots—beyond the usual fare of Afghanistan, Iraq, a struggling economy and another seismic temblor somewhere on earth—that are reminders of the nanosecond speed with which life keeps retrograding these days.
And for the church on earth? I wouldn’t classify it as “blinding speed,” but truth is our own community of faith is facing a sea change, as well. Theologically? Probably not, though I’m sure I could fill this blog with quotations from significant thinkers, who are concerned that the church faces unprecedented challenges to her core understanding of biblical truth. A sea change ecclesiastically? Probably not, though there are just as many voices calling for social and policy change in the church—from homosexuality, to racial and gender equality, to ordination polity, to financial distribution and apportionment (the list can be lengthy). It’s very possible, as well, that we will have to face a sea change in our missions and evangelistic strategies. The burgeoning culture of secularism that dominates both the West and the East calls for radical new evangelistic strategies that can engage a culture that still wants to belong long before it seeks to believe. And shall we not build new bridges to the Islamic world as well? Surely, the Spirit of God can unleash a fresh wind of new outside-the-box thinking and evangelizing, can’t he?
The point? In a world of such uncertain but dramatic flux, with a church that faces her own sea changes, it is more than the right time to call the community of faith to gather before God in earnest collective prayer. Here at the Pioneer Memorial Church on the campus of Andrews University, we are doing just that. Sabbath, June 5, is designated as a special Day of Fasting and Prayer in this congregation and campus and community. A world to pray for, a church to pray for, each other to pray for—for this critical moment in history, shall we not claim the very promise of God? “‘Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me’” (Psalm 50:15 NKJV). Won’t you please join us in this Day of corporate calling upon Him?
He lost seven teeth! I don’t know about you, but it was traumatic enough as a kid losing one tooth at a time. But seven? Though he’s really not to blame. Because when Duncan Keith saw the puck coming, there simply wasn’t enough time to turn his head. And so his mouth took the full brunt of that speeding ice hockey puck Sunday evening. Owww! And sure enough, when Keith put his hand up to his mouth, he spat out seven of his favorite teeth. Gone! Why then was Duncan Keith all smiles afterwards? Because his team, the Chicago Blackhawks, won on Sunday and are now headed to the Stanley Cup finals next week. And what are seven broken teeth in comparison to a dream chance to win the Super Bowl of ice hockey? Asked by reporters if he’d be replacing those seven teeth this week before the finals, Keith grinned and shook his head. No sense risking losing seven new teeth all over again. He plans to wait until the finals are over. Smart move, Duncan!
So what are you willing to risk for the sake of dream? Let’s face it—the bigger the dream, the higher the risk. Which is true for both the Andrews Academy graduates this weekend, as well as the “Mad About Marriage” seminar attendees. Brooding over a dream career? Dreaming of high octane joy in a lifelong marriage? It doesn’t matter the life goal you’re pursuing, the truth of the matter is you’ve got to be willing to take the Duncan Keith kind of risk. Which, of course, was precisely Jesus’ point to all of us: “‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life’” (Mark 8:34, 35 NLT).
Come to think of it, that’s what our Day of Fasting and Prayer (Sabbath, June 5) is about as well, isn’t it? Why would anybody fast about anything? Because if the stakes are high enough, you’re willing to sacrifice about anything to go for the “win.” And could the stakes for the church be higher on this planet than right now? The two Koreas at it again. Afghanistan and Iraq. The Euro and the European Union, and the UK and the US—all gripped (just this side of strangled) by crippling debt. And somewhere on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico we have opened a Pandora’s Box of ill. In three weeks world leaders and delegates of our community of faith meet in Atlanta to elect leaders and conduct the business of the church. Shouldn’t we be going to the mat before God on behalf of our world, our nation and our church? Join us next Sabbath, won’t you, for that sort of praying? Have questions about this idea of fasting? Go to our website, www.pmchurch.tv, and click on to the Day of Fasting and Prayer special banner—read the PDF paper—and invite your friends and family to join you. “‘If you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life.’” Because some prayers, some dreams, some hopes are worth sacrificing for, aren’t they?
Have you read the latest survey on teenagers? Two weeks ago George Barna, the Christian demographer, released a new national survey of 602 teenagers, in which they were asked to describe what they think their lives will be like in ten years. And their responses are intriguing.
Boding well for an academic community like ours, their top-rated priority for the future was finishing a college degree (93% of them declaring that by the age of 25 that would definitely or probably happen). Their next highest ten year life goal was to “have a great paying job” (81% of these teens believe it will definitely or probably happen). Their third highest goal was to “have a job where you can make a difference” (80%). And just behind that was their #4 goal, to have “a close, personal relationship with God” (72% felt such a relationship would definitely or probably be a reality ten years from now). The rest of their top ten ten-year goals in this survey were: #5, travel to other countries (71%); #6, to be “actively involved in a church or faith community” (63%); #7, to be married (58%); #8, to regularly serve the poor (48%); #9, to have children (40%); and #10, to “be famous or well-known” (26%).
Interestingly, George Barna notes, “Current church attendance appears to be a better predictor of future religious activity than is a teen’s religion affiliation. Among weekly attenders of religious youth groups, 60% said they definitely will be involved in a church in the future, which compares to just 22% of teens who attend less frequently and 14% among teens who never attend such religious functions” (http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/13-culture/366...).
So how is it with our Pioneer teenagers? Take, for example, this morning’s worship platform filled with our own “tweens” and teens, active members of our Pathfinder Club, the Evergreens. Take a long, hard look at these kids who are “our own”—bright young Seventh-day Adventist Christian teens. And then ask yourself the question, How high a priority should it be for this congregation to invest its best energies, its most dedicated leaders, its deepest sacrificial giving to ensure that “our own” survive their own uncharted voyage into the next ten years?
After all, look at the world they’re inheriting—ecologically hemorrhaging at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, economically hemorrhaging in the European Union and the United States, morally hemorrhaging in Hollywood and a society practically salivating for our teens’ immersion into its culture. Shouldn’t their church, our church be a safe haven for young hearts? That’s precisely why I’m so grateful for the men and women who lead our young—in our Pathfinder and Adventurers clubs, in our Sabbath Schools from nursery to youth, in our church schools at Ruth Murdoch and Andrews Academy. They remain year after year our unsung heroes in this battle for the heart and soul of every generation! And to them the rest of us owe a genuine debt of gratitude.
“Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth” (Ecclesiastes 12:1)—if ever there were a divine injunction (and promise) for Creator-worshiping Adventist kids, wouldn’t it be this? And if ever Creator-loving Adventist grownups needed to seize the moment to support their young with all the time and money and volunteering energy we can muster, wouldn’t this be that time? Won’t you help us help them?
Look, I’m not an oil company executive or engineer, OK? But three weeks into the on-going BP oil well blowout fiasco (or crisis, if you prefer) in the Gulf of Mexico, does it trouble you at all that nobody seems to know for sure what we’re supposed to be doing next? With over 4 million gallons of crude oil already spewed into the Gulf since the well blowout on April 20, what if the leak (at a rate federal officials now estimate to be 210,000 gallons/day) can’t be capped? I.e., what if a million gallons of crude a week keep gushing out of the broken well head into the Gulf of Mexico and eventually the oceans beyond?
I hadn’t even contemplated such a disastrous “worst case scenario” until two friends put me in touch with the Pure Energy Systems Network website (www.pesn.com) that carries the reflective analysis of software engineer and oil industry analyst Paul Noel. Noel observes that while BP officials are not commenting, the oil and natural gas deposit they were drilling into when the fatal blowout occurred may be either the largest or second largest such deposit in the world—easily topping 500,000 barrels of production a day for ten to fifteen years! The deposit covers up to 25,000 square miles and lies thirty thousand feet into the earth’s crust beneath the five-thousand-foot deep floor of the Gulf of Mexico. (You get the picture—it’s huge!) Drilling for that “deep oil,” BP punched a hole into this super-charged high-pressure (70,000 psi) pocket, and the rest is the unfolding story of a potential crisis, the magnitude of which nobody yet dares to predict. What if in all the efforts to plug the leak/hole, a much larger hole is blown open? What then? “Stunning dangerous” is how Noel described it. Another panicked writer bluntly predicted, “We are seeing a major historical and economic event taking place that could change the world as we have known it.”
What’s that have to do with you and me? Simple. The unfolding saga in the Gulf is an apocalyptic-like reminder that whether it be a volcano or an earthquake or hurricane (all acts of nature), or whether it be a BP-like disaster or a Greece-like economic meltdown (all acts of man), life on this terrestrial ball can suddenly, literally over-night be irrevocably changed.
Which is why the call to collective prayer sounded in today’s story (“The Santayana Factor—Tales of the Kings”—II) is so earnestly essential. In five weeks leaders and delegates from my own community of faith will gather in Atlanta, Georgia, for a week of prayerful deliberations. Shall it be once again business as usual? Or should the hearts of God’s people be stirred to their depths with the compelling sense of our utter need for his intervention at this critical time in earth’s history? I believe it is the latter that must awaken us to corporate prayer as never before. As the narrative of this ancient king reminds us, it is the moral duty of spiritual leaders to call the people of God to prayer. Then shall we not unite in this common prayer? “‘O our God—we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you’” (II Chronicles 20:12).
So how much is your mother worth? Not that she was anybody’s mother, the subject in Picasso’s painting “Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur.” Turns out she was the renown painter’s mistress—which hardly makes her an appropriate theme for Mother’s Day. And yet the buzz throughout the art world this week has been all about the auction price this oil canvas of Picasso’s actually fetched on Tuesday night. Reputed to have been painted by Picasso in just one day back in 1964, this 5 feet by 4 feet painting put up for auction at Christie’s auction house lasted a full 8 minutes and six seconds on the auctioneer’s block. In the end six bidders drove the price through the ceiling, until it soared to a new world record for any auctioned piece of art. How much did Picasso’s woman go for? A feverish $106.5 million. Not bad for a day’s work, is it?
If only our beloved mothers could have enjoyed the luxury of just a day’s work. The nation pauses this weekend to remember these devoted women we dearly love—mothers who never ended up on a Christie’s auction house canvas—and yet whose self-sacrificing love for the likes of you and me is a portrait of infinitely greater worth than any Picasso masterpiece. For truth be known, when the colors of our mothers were splashed across the canvases of our own childhoods and teen age years, how could anyone possibly affix any price at all to their devotion and love?
No wonder the scene of that shining moment was etched onto the canvas of Calvary, never to be effaced—when from the cross the God of the universe gazed down through his own tortured pain onto the face of the woman who had birthed him and bathed him, loved him and caressed him, taught him and trained him, who had fiercely held him in her heart when it seemed that all the world rejected him. No wonder his dying thoughts—not unlike young soldiers on many a forgotten battlefield whose final cries, history records, were for their mothers—no wonder Jesus whispered to his mother, when prayers to his Father were choked and stifled. The Son of God had but one mother. And to her his undying love was pledged.
This Mother’s Day as you thank God for your own mother and recite to her your love again and again, ponder this recollection of William Cowper, “On Receipt of My Mother’s Picture”:
Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
“Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!”
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
I love you, Mother.
What do golden orb spiders have to do with you 600 Andrews graduates this weekend? This past fall a shining piece of yellow-gold textile (11 ft x 4 ft) went on display in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Woven from the silk of more than a million wild female golden orb spiders, this rare cloth is a four year collaboration of seventy people searching telephone poles in Madagascar to collect the spiders (which bite), with another twelve workers gingerly extracting the silk filament from each of the arachnids (about 80 feet per spider). Weaving the 96-filament threads together resulted in “the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.” (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/)
Why the fascination with spider silk? Because it’s “stronger than steel or Kevlar but far more flexible, stretching up to 40 percent of its normal length without breaking.” If science could mass produce spider silk, we could have fabric for biomedical scaffolds or perhaps an alternative to Kevlar armor. But so far we haven’t been able to replicate the spider’s stunning production that begins as liquid protein in a small gland in her abdomen. When she subsequently applies physical force to that liquid, she actually rearranges the protein’s molecular structure and turns it into solid silk, “stronger than steel!”
What’s all this have to do with you graduates today? Let me get a bit more personal now, since one of you is named Dwight Kirkpatrick Nelson (which means his mother and I are as excited as your parents over the incredible achievement that we’re celebrating together). For four years you’ve been the recipient of the “liquid protein” of a Seventh-day Adventist education. Semester after semester of information, knowledge, wisdom, experiment and experience have been poured into your bright minds. And tomorrow you receive the well-deserved accolades and recognition of your academic feat.
But as the golden orb spider reminds us, having reserves filled with liquid protein is one thing—producing shiny golden silk quite another. Which is why, like the spider, it will take the collusion of forces within you and around you—forces spiritual, social, intellectual and even physical—to weave a unique new silken tapestry out of your life—one you were destined for from the beginning. Choose the companionship of the God who has loved you from the day of your birth and guided you to this day of such accomplishment, and you can be certain your life tapestry and story will be woven with silk “stronger than steel.”
And so on behalf of your parents, who love you dearly and are very proud of you—and your professors and your campus pastors—let me send you into the uncharted adventure ahead with this unfailing promise: “There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears” (Philippians 1:6 Message).
It isn’t pretty when Mother Nature blows her stack! For over a week now the economy of our little planet has been held hostage by an angry volcano fuming above the frigid plains of Iceland. They call her Eyjafjallajoekull (meaning “island mountain glacier”), and the good news is she hasn’t put on a display like this since 1821. The bad news is that back then she threw her tantrums for thirteen long months!
But there was no air travel back then. While flights have now been “ungrounded” in Europe, the airline industry has calculated that air carriers lost $1.7 billion as a consequence of their decision to keep their passengers and planes out of the wind-blown ash clouds. But that “better to be safe than sorry” precaution came with a very heavy price tag. Without auto parts shipments, BMW and Nissan auto plants in Germany and Japan were forced to close temporarily. Flower growers in Kenya—which exports to the world 1,000 tons a day of fresh goods—threw away 10 million flowers, mostly roses, with refrigerated storages overflowing. Asparagus and broccoli ended up, not on European tables, but as cattle feed instead. Tourism in Europe dropped. Train travel skyrocketed. Oil prices fell. And then the mountain went still. Almost.
But if she should resume belching her black plumes into the heavens for a prolonged period, Reuters reported that some economists estimate the European GDP could be lowered between 1 and 2 percent. Amazing, isn’t it, how a faraway island volcano can impact an entire globe?
Just another cycle . . . or just another reminder? After all, you could hardly expect Mother Nature to keep still as this civilization approaches the day of reckoning, could you? Seismologists in Southern California “cannot fully explain” why already this year that region has experienced 70 quakes greater than 4.0 magnitude, when there were only 30 in all of 2009 and 29 in 2008.What’s going on? No—who’s coming back?
The confidence implied in that second question is captured in the hymn of the psalmist: “God is our harbour and our strength, a very present help in trouble. For this cause we will have no fear, even though the earth is changed, and though the mountains are moved in the heart of the sea; though its waters are sounding and troubled, and though the mountains are shaking with their violent motion” (Psalm 46:1-3 BBE). Mountains shaking with violent motion in the heart of the sea—sounds like Iceland’s “Island-mountain-glacier,” doesn’t it? But never mind: “The LORD of hosts [the angel armies] is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge” (v 7 NKJV).
Great news for the students of this university who end another academic cycle. Graduate or returnee, the promise is that “the Lord of Hosts” or “the King of Angels” is with you. And who better to be with you, when nature trembles, the economy tumbles? Who better to open a closed job market than the God whose angel still guards and guides you? No wonder Psalm 46 can be your hymn, too. “For this cause we will have no fear.”
Here’s an Earth Day idea for you. Paul Hawkens in his “green” book, Blessed Unrest, tells of an old rabbinical teaching that if we hear that the world is ending and the Messiah is coming, we must first plant a tree and then go and determine if the story is true or not. For Seventh-day Adventists, who champion God’s creation memorial and who celebrate the return of the Creator, planting a tree isn’t such a bad idea, is it?
For millennia now our creation has suffered deeply under the effects of our very human rebellion. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. . . . We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” (Romans 8:19, 22). Can you imagine the latent longing within the natural world for the promised deliverance? But until then, how shall we live, we Sabbath-keepers of the Creator’s flame?
We could begin by eating green—that’s right, vegetarianism would diminish the number of animals raised and killed for consumption, and thus reduce the one-fifth of earth’s greenhouse gases livestock produce! We can turn off the lights in the rooms we exit. We could inflate our tires and save 2 billion gallons of gas a year, some say. We could shorten our showers by two minutes, saving twelve gallons of water. We could recycle. We could save a few trees by skipping the receipts at ATMs and gas pumps, saving by one estimate 3 billion feet of paper. We could use our own thermos bottles and quit drinking bottled water, since a one liter bottle requires 5 liters of water to cool the plastic, thus resulting in six liters of water for each bottle! Lists of “green” or environmentally friendly ways to live (like these from Ashleigh Burtnett in the Student Movement here at the university) are all over the web, and you can make your own.
The point? As Creator-worshiping, Sabbath-keeping, nature-preserving friends of Jesus, shouldn’t we be at the forefront of ecological conservation and environmental care and protection? Truth be known, God himself planted a tree once upon a time to save this creation. “To the death of Christ we owe even this earthly life. The bread [our farmland] we eat is the purchase of His broken body. The water [our rivers, streams] we drink is bought by His spilled blood. . . . The cross of Calvary is stamped on every loaf. It is reflected in every water spring” (DA 660). Given the infinite cost of planting that tree, we must join him in saving his creation. Don’t you agree?
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