I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.   We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Romans 8:18-21).

Is the earth doomed?  So it would seem from the news.  From oil spills to too much rain to too much heat in the US, to wildfires in Russia, to worst floods in Pakistani history, to the collapse of fisheries throughout the oceans, to continuing drought in Africa—and now to a huge “ice island” breaking off from the Greenland icecap that could barge its way south into shipping lanes and mow down Canadian oil rigs.  Are we now reaping what we’ve sown?  What is the earth telling us?

The truth is that it’s pretty hard to “read” the earth accurately.  It doesn’t give us verbal messages.  But to many ecologists and climatologists it seems to be saying, “I’ve had it with you people; now you’re really going to get it!”  Secular scientists by the score are sinking into deep depression for fear that mankind has caused the earth’s natural equilibrium to go beyond the tipping point and there is no stopping the Great Environmental Crash.  “There is no hope.”  That’s the conclusion of more and more scientific researchers.

Yet there is hope—a hope expressed in the Christian Scriptures that, as far as I know, does not appear in any other faith.  It seems, in fact, that the biblical passage for today is a message for our era—for this very moment in history.  The natural world is groaning both from human abuse and from the curse God placed on it after the Fall, but the apostle Paul tells us that this groaning is from the pain of childbirth—a pain that we know is also filled with the hope and potential of new life.  Because of the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, mankind has been given the opportunity of rescue.  But that same act also made certain that the creation too will be refreshed, restored, reunited, and reconciled to God.  This will happen in full, of course, when Jesus Christ returns to set up His kingdom.  So the earth will be healed for certain.

Note another thing: Paul does not say that the creation is looking for Jesus to return to make things right.  He says that the creation is looking for the time when the true followers of Jesus Christ are finally revealed.  Yes, we know that revelation will happen at the return of Christ, but the joy and expectation of the natural world is linked to God’s children—to God’s people.  We will have something to do with creation’s restoration then. But there’s another point:  God’s children will indeed be revealed in the Consummation, but we are God’s children now.  We know what is good and right now; so we can be doing what is good and right now.

I believe that Francis Schaeffer had it right when he said this about what we should be doing now:

On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who—with God’s help and in the power of the Holy Spirit—is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then.  It will not now be perfect, but is must be substantial, or we have missed our calling.  God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature—just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality—is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.
(Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology, Tyndale House, 1970, pp. 68-69)

If Christians rallied to this call (even forty years late) and became outspoken and hard-working creation champions, I’m convinced that thousands, if not millions, of people without hope might have their ears turned toward the hope expressed in the Word of God—and to its gospel message.  What a wonderful double blessing they could receive: redemption for their souls as well as hope for the earth, God’s good creation.  Isn’t it possible that this dual hope could be the basis of a great turning to Christ in what might be the final agony of creation before its rebirth?

[CBS news photos]

Dean is currently in the Pacific Northwest and is making an informal study of the great trees of that region. Today’s “Ambling” post is on the big-leaf maple, one of the world’s great trees for furniture—and, as Genesis said about the trees of the Garden, “pleasing to the eye.”

Dean is currently in the Pacific Northwest and is making an informal study of the great trees of that region. Today’s “Ambling” post is on the Western redcedar, one of the world’s great trees for building materials—and, as Genesis said about the trees of the Garden, “pleasing to the eye.”

So the LORD God banished [Adam] from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.  After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life (Genesis 3:23-24).

I’m among a dwindling number of people who remember childhood summers like that which forms the theme of “American Summer,” a painting by recently deceased local artist Armand Merizon. Merizon captured beautifully the joy of summer experienced by we “OAK Boys”: Ohlman, Andrews, and Kenfield—I and my two boyhood friends, who had the liberty to wander the local landscape all summer, shoeless and carefree.  When I saw this print at a garage sale, I was filled with nostalgia and had to buy it.

Nostalgia, a bittersweet emotion: It fills you with memories of wonderful past experiences—yet tells you can’t return.

My creation-care friend Jerry Lang recently sent me a devotional he wrote on a newly identified emotion that comes not when you leave a pleasant environment but when the environment leaves you.  Here are Jerry’s thoughts:

“Solastalgia” is a recently coined term created by combining the words “solace”, “desolation”, and “nostalgia”. It has been used by environmentalists referring to a feeling of homesickness while still at home—a sadness resulting from environmental changes that somehow severely alter or destroy the feelings associated with one’s home place. People along the Gulf Coast are certainly experiencing severe solastalgia associated with the BP oil spill devastation.  Other examples might be Appalachian people surrounded by mountaintop removal operations that have destroyed the surrounding landscape or commercial fishermen in the North Atlantic where fisheries they depended on have collapsed.

God created the earth as a home for humankind. There is no indication in the Genesis creation story that God ever intended for Adam and Eve to die and leave the paradise on earth he had created for them. But then sin entered the picture, and earthly paradise was lost (Gen. 3:23-24). Our relationship with earth’s creator was also broken. We began suffering from solastagia—a longing for home as the original earthly paradise was once and for restoration of our original relationship with the Creator. All creation began groaning under the bondage of sin (Rom. 8:22).

Although through Christ we are citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20), God provides for us through the earth, which remains his and which he still loves despite our sinful damage to it (Ps. 24:1). While we long for heaven and know that Christ has prepared a place there for us (Jn. 14:2), Revelation shows us that, in the end, heaven will descend to earth and all (including the earth) will be made new (restored to a paradise).

Often on earth, we may feel like the Israelites who hung their harps on the willows of Babylon and wept (Ps. 137:2), but our hope remains in God (Ps. 42:11). While we know that our earthly home is not as God intended, we persevere tending our earthly garden (Gen. 2:15) in love until the day heaven and earth rejoin under the reign of Christ (Rev. 21:1-3).