Pondering what has helped me move forward in my faith and relationship with God has called my attention to what has focused me over the last decade and a half of my life: the world itself. This painting by artist Greg Mort captures much of what has captured me over this period of time.

It raises a number of spiritual and theological questions for me, and perhaps for you as well:

Why compare the earth to an apple?...because it is consumable?...because it holds the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17)?...because it is easily bruised?

Or, why wrap it in tissue paper?...because it is a gift?...because it needs to be polished?...because it is fragile and needs to be protected?

Or why put a price tag on it?...because it is being sold?...because it is very costly?...because we have no idea what it is worth?

Struggling with questions like these has drawn me deeper into relationship with the One who put us all “in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." (Genesis 2:15) and with the One through whom God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven. (Colossians 1:20)

Lent is a good time for me to embrace the questions afresh as they remind me that humankind is entrusted by God with a high calling:

• to recognize the great worth that the garden of earth is;
• to remember that it is indeed a gift;
• to realize that is fragile;
• to remember that Christ redeems all things
• and to take courageous part in resisting the perils that threaten our precious yet vulnerable home.

This prods me (recalcitrant as I sometime am) to address the small individual things I can do to recycle, reuse, and repurpose the stuff of my daily life; and to attend to the big thing -which is the kind and quantity of energy that is required for a world that can endure as God's good gift for future generations.

Cam Murchison

March 21, 2023