EDUCATORS AS STEWARDS OF GOD’S CREATION
By:
Prof. Carlos P. Magtolis, Jr.
|
SU Church Administrator
Posted:
“EDUCATORS AS STEWARDS OF GOD’S CREATION”
Psalm 24
In caring for Mother Earth, we specifically refer to that portion of the earth’s surface extending about 30 miles into the atmosphere and three miles below the crust. Only within this zone, some 33 miles in thickness, are found the physical conditions that life possible. This is referred to as the human habitat. This human habitat consists of four spheres: the atmosphere or the gaseous portion, the lithosphere or the solid portion, the hydrosphere or the water portion and the biosphere where plants, animals and other organisms live. Here are found the flowers, the trees, the birds. This place is God’s home, God’s sanctuary. And our home too.
Jesus spent many nights on a mountain. He was frequently found in a garden. He spent many hours at the sea. Jesus saw the grandeur of the mountains and the beauty of the fields, showing the glory of God.
The created world is full of God’s glory. Let us open our eyes to see in nature the Lord of might and power, of wisdom and goodness and love. It is our belief as Christians that God set the whole world in order.
As Christian educators, we accept our responsibility as to how to use God’s glory everything here on earth – everything we have and touch. We are engaged in the stewardship of life. The earth is God’s and we are not free to do with it as we please.
We are not free to pollute the water or to denude the forests and plunder the mineral resources. Nor should we litter God’s countryside and highways with trash.
Instead, it is God’s will that we work hard at solving waste and pollution problems which beset our world. As stewards we can not but serve God and people faithfully, for the love of Jesus, our Savior constrains us.
Obviously, it is not our sacred right to destroy this wonderful world and with the rest of the earth’s resources. When God gave us “Mother Earth”, he was talking responsible use, expecting us to use it wisely as stewards of His creation.
As we walk around, we tread on holy ground. God has given this Mother Earth to us, but we are responsible to God for the way we use it and its resources, we have responsibilities to our families, to our neighbors, to God – for all that God has given us to use.
In Christ there is forgiveness, and in Him there is power to live responsibly in the world.
God created the world as a masterpiece of love. All living things were created to partake of the bounties of the earth. And human kind-created in the image of God – was born to be steward of all earth, and partner in continuing the never ending process of creation and of giving birth to life.
Yes, everything that God creates is good. Light is good; heaven and earth are good; vegetation is good; sun, moon and stars are good; animals are good; yet only after God created both man and woman does God deem His work very good.
Everything in creation is good because it comes from God’s holy and creative Word, but only man and woman bear the actual image of God.
In Christ, we bear God’s holy image because we are God’s beloved new creation. Let us therefore be very good stewards of God’s creation as our “response towards care of Mother Earth.”
