Creation Care

So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God's rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. (Hebrews 4:9-10)

It's Wednesday. Which is not our Sabbath day. But I find myself thinking about Sabbath on this Wednesday anyway - which seems fitting. Sabbath isn't, after all, really about one of the seven days. It's not really about which day during the week we don't mow our lawn or avoid shopping malls. Sabbath isn't really about piety at all.

Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. (Proverbs 31:9)

In the month of April 2013, the community of Kijabe, Kenya received rainfall levels equal to their total average annual rainfall. This extreme rain event reached a climax at the end of the month, when the saturated land could hold no longer, and a massive mudslide ripped through the village, killing three children in its wake.

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

God requires justice from his people – and not just a little drip of it here and there, but a rushing flow, a river of it that cleanses, renews and refreshes. Justice is a life-force that soaks into parched hearts and communities bringing with it peace, renewal, shalom.

We must have water to live. We must have justice to live the way God requires.

Join us as we ponder the connections between Christ's walk to the cross, our mortality and sin, and creation's limitations. 

These are the questions that we will explore with our Lenten series Ash and Oil: Remembering we are Dust, Leaning toward a New Creation. We invite you to join us by signing up here to receive devotions in your inbox three times a week, or simply by checking back for new posts on the Do Justice blog every other weekday throughout Lent.

Do you have plans for how to stay alert to injustice in 2015? Or are you in danger of becoming apathetic?

A few years ago, a Fulani village in Mali was ignored in a proposal for a region-wide irrigation project. The village submitted the appropriate paperwork but when the official plans were introduced, the village was left off the map completely--it was as if they didn’t exist.

"It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. So we must stand up for what we believe in.” Wangari Maathai, founder of the Greenbelt Movement, began planting trees as a response to the lack of resources and the degradation of the environment in rural Kenyan villages. She empowered women across the country to join her, despite deep political and gender repression. This is the trailer for the documentary about the life and work of Maathai, the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m no art critic, much less a patron of the arts, but on the principle that even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut, I managed to stumble across Jungen’s striking work.

Every few months a new report shows that the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly irreversible. Clearly United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon understands the gravity of the climate situation when he noted that, “we know that we are not on track, and time is not on our side.”

My colleague Shannon Jammal-Hollemans recently made a powerful statement, saying Christians tend to focus on the Fall at the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil, rather than focusing on the Tree of Life. I believe this cuts to the core of the “burden” of injustice, shedding light on the frustrating, paradoxical occurrence of disempowered Jesus followers.