Caretaker or destroyer?

When I look at the sky, which you have made,
at the moon and stars, which you set in their places—
what are human beings, that you think of them;
mere mortals, that you care for them?
Yet you made them inferior only to yourself;
you crowned them with glory and honour.
(verses 3-5)

Read Psalm 8

Like Genesis chapter 1, this psalm shows that human beings were created to be the pinnacle of God’s creation. They were created to live in harmony with him, with other human beings and with creation itself. They were created to look after and manage creation for God.

And haven’t we done it well! Thousands of God s animals are now extinct. Enough trees are cut down in the Amazon basin each day to provide enough oxygen for large cities. Soils are leached and eroded, some becoming so salty as to be unusable. In less than two hundred years we Australians have turned much of what was fertile country into desert—with some help from rabbits and sheep.

No animal would ever set about systematically to destroy the only home they have. Yet we seem hell-bent on doing that.

Yet God has not given up on us. He still sees us as being worth saving, to be restored to be what we were always meant to be. He does this in Jesus. Creation groans as it waits for us all to be saved, so that it too can be delivered.

Father, I praise you, for I am wonderfully made. Help me to be the manager of creation that you meant me to be, and which I can be in Jesus. Amen.

by Robert Turnbull, in ‘Renewed Hope for each Day’ (LCA, Openbook, 2000)

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