Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” … The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. [Genesis 1:28,2:15 (NLT)]
It is terrible to hear the young birds calling for food after the old ones have been killed to get the feathers for rich women to wear. I am not going to have my birds sacrificed that way. [Rhett Green (Corkscrew Swamp Audubon Warden from 1912 – 1917)]
The wading birds of southwest Florida are absolutely beautiful, especially this time of year when they’re wearing their mating plumage. We’ve lived here eleven years and I still haven’t tired of their beauty as I encounter them daily in our ponds. 115 years ago, however, I would have been hard put to see any of these beautiful creatures anywhere. In the late 1800s, bird feathers became the fashion craze in women’s hats. Along with a plethora of plumes, some hats even featured an entire exotic bird! By 1900, more than five million birds were being killed every year and plume hunters had nearly wiped out the entire egret population. It wasn’t just the egrets with their white mating plumes—herons, roseate spoonbills, flamingoes, and peacocks were among the fifty North American species being killed for their plumage. No bird was safe.
After killing the birds and stripping them of their plumage, poachers would leave their carcasses to rot. They also left abandoned nests with eggs that would never hatch or baby birds unable to fend for themselves. For the hunters, poaching was profitable; they could easily bag 100 birds on a good day and the plumes sold for as much as $32 dollars an ounce. Merely for the sake of fashion, the bird population in rookeries was decimated throughout Florida and the southeast U.S. Fortunately, because of a grass roots campaign by two Boston socialites, organizations like the Audubon Society, and both state and national legislation, the carnage of these beautiful creatures has stopped.
We were called to be good stewards of the earth, but we still show little regard for God’s creation. Last fall, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted 11 species of birds from the endangered species list—not because they no longer were at risk but because they had become extinct! In 2021, Birdlife International reported that nearly 1,500 of the 11,000 species of birds face the threat of extinction with another 1,000 species considered “vulnerable.” We’re not wearing fancy feathered hats but loss of habitat, climate change, wind farms, cell towers, pesticides, cats, and even windows pose threats to them. It’s not just birds that are in danger; our local papers are filled with reports of blue-green algae, red tide, fish kills, Florida panther loss, starving manatees, diminishing wetlands, and endangered sea turtles! Worldwide, we face plenty of other pressing environmental issues including oil spills, water pollution, global warming, fossil fuel dependency, a diminishing rain forest, and the loss of open land (to name just a few).
When I look at the birds with their beautiful plumage, I thank God for their creation and for the people who took action to save them. Although God did the creating, it is up to us to do the maintaining. In Genesis, we read that God gave mankind permission to govern the earth and reign over all the animals along with the responsibility of tending and watching over His garden. The Hebrew word used for “tend” was shamar and it means more than keeping the land cultivated and free of weeds. It means keeping watch, preserving, guarding, and protecting. Have we tended God’s beautiful garden and made it thrive or have we run roughshod over it without regard for His creation?
Today is Earth Day. Observed by over a billion people every year, it has become the largest secular observance in the world. Concern for our environment, however, is not a secular concern—it is a sacred responsibility given to us by God. Let us remember that every day is Earth Day!
Lord, grant us the wisdom to care for the earth and till it. Help us to act now for the good of future generations and all your creatures. Help us to become instruments of a new creation, Founded on the covenant of your love. [The Cry of the Earth]
While asking one’s teacher how to pray was a typical request in Jesus’ day, Jesus was anything but a typical teacher. He’d walked on water, stilled storms, healed the sick, raised the dead, and turned water into wine, but His disciples didn’t ask how to do those impressive miracles. Instead, they asked Him how to pray.
The book of Daniel begins with the arrival of the first set of Judean captives in 605 BC and the first six chapters describe the events occurring in Babylon until around 536 and the beginning of the Persian empire. In contrast, chapters seven through twelve are filled with visions and dreams. As part of the Jewish and Christian canon, the traditional view is that this book is a factual recounting of Daniel’s life and a record of supernatural predictions written during the late 6th century BC. Skeptics, however, call its author a fraud and the book fiction because of the mention of Belshazzar as the last king of Babylon, Darius the Mede as the one who took over Babylon, and the incredible accuracy of Daniel’s fulfilled prophecies. They claim that the book had to have been written (or amended) 400 years later in the 2nd century BC by someone claiming to be Daniel.
Let’s go back to the sixties—a time of “turn on, tune in, drop out”—a counter-culture of “flower power,” anti-war sentiment, and discontented disillusioned youth. When Chuck Smith saw these “hippies” on the California beaches, he said they needed a bath but, when his wife Kay saw them, she said they needed the Lord! Moving their message onto the streets and beach, they opened the doors of their church to those kids and anyone else who wanted to come in. Regardless of faith, background, attire, length of hair, addictions, political views, cleanliness, or finances, the church unconditionally welcomed everyone. While still preaching the uncompromising truth of the Gospel, what began as a congregation of 25, within eight years had to conduct three Sunday services in a 2,200-seat auditorium!
For a Christian, being hospitable should be second nature but, for many, the thought of entertaining is terrifying. Entertaining, however, has nothing to do with hospitality. One has to do with cuisine, attire, atmosphere, and possessions, and says “Look what I have,” while the other has to do with love, respect, sharing, refreshment, and comfort and says, “What I have is yours!” One is meant to impress and the other is meant to bless.
Today, when someone is called the “salt of the earth,” the speaker probably means he or she is a dependable, unpretentious and honest person—someone of moral integrity. That is well and good as far as it goes, but Jesus meant more than that when He called us to be “the salt of the earth.”
