A completely different subject for this post… but it does have a connection to faith
A few weeks back my husband and I watched a remake of an older movie.. ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still.’ We had seen it before but I had forgotten most of it.
The plot was basically that aliens had been watching the earth and time had run out for humans. The aliens wanted to save the earth.
I found it interesting that when some humans realised that ‘saving the earth’ was from what humans were doing to it, not saving it FOR humans, people promised to change.
(Well that’s the short version of a more complex plot.)
At the end I wondered – ‘why will people take correction… lessons…instructions… warnings – from ‘aliens’ and not from God?’
From the beginning…
Genesis 2: 15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to tend and keep it.
What does this mean? I found, on a site called Bibletools, the following explanation…
Tend (Hebrew ‘abad) means “to work or serve,” and thus referring to the ground or a garden, it can be defined as “to till or cultivate.” It possesses the nuance seen in the KJV’s choice in its translation: “dress,” implying adornment, embellishment, and improvement.
Keep (Hebrew shamar) means “to exercise great care over.” In the context of Genesis 2:15, it expresses God’s wish that mankind, in the person of Adam, “take care of,” “guard,” or “watch over” the garden. A caretaker maintains and protects his charge so that he can return it to its owner in as good or better condition than when he received it. Link to ‘tend and keep’
Well, looking around the world today we could hardly saying we are looking after it (tending) or improving it (keep).
A walk around my neighbourhood – a once beautiful ‘bush’ reserve littered with beer bottles, discarded cans, empty pizza boxes and McDonald wrappings. Oh, and not forgetting the odd discarded sy
ringe.
(I enlarged the lower right corner to show some of the rubbish)
Once a year there is a ‘clean up Australia day’… but that is not even a drop in the ocean.
Where is our love for what God has blessed us with?
Why is it so impossible to take our rubbish home and dispose of it?
Would people, as those at the end of the movie we watched respond to the aliens’ message?
Well, an accounting time IS coming…
The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small– and for destroying those who destroy the earth. Revelations 11:18 NIV (bolding mine)
Littering is only one small facet of destroying the earth, there are far worse things happening. I guess I see it as a symptom of our disregard for our environment and lack of concern for the consequences.
Something to think about, and make sure we do our small part.
Shalom
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