Living With Respect in Creation

To Live With Respect in Creation -- Gary Crawford

After worship on Sunday we took our two grandsons, six and three and a half, out for lunch. The enjoy the play area at McDonald's but we don't like the ridiculous amount of single-use plastic which ends up as waste from our four meals. We went to A&W instead to test the level of resistance. It's possible for adults to eat a sit-down meal with no plastic garbage, although kid's drinks have a plastic lid. We started to explain about straws but the six-year-old was already on board. He told us that his Mom has talked with him about not using throw-away plastics and other things we can do to be kind to the environment.

When we dropped the boys at home later I commended her efforts to educate the boys early. She told me that the older of the two had come home from kindergarten and asked what climate change is, obviously having heard about it in school. She attempted to gently help him understand but as he listened he began to cry at the prospect of a planet under siege. They then talked about how they might make a difference.

Hearing that he had cried cut me to the quick. In fact, I was awake in the wee hours of the next morning thinking about this precious lad and what we Baby Boomers have degraded the Earth in the years of the post-WWII era, a mere blink in planetary history, as homo consumeris.

On Sundays we sit with the boys in church until they leave for Sunday School, always a joy to be with them as we sing our praises to God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. I want this to be more than lip service, so that they may experience abundant life as children of the One who brought all things into being.

It must be 25 years ago that Gary Crawford, the artist who created the images for the United Church New Creed booklet, was a guest speaker for the congregation I was serving in Northern Ontario. Gary was selling prints of his work and we bought the image with the line "to live with respect in Creation." At that time our son was still in grade school so both theme and depiction appealed to us. If anything it is more poignant for us now.

We must "live with respect in Creation," prayerfully, actively, with God being our helper.