How & Why We Celebrate Earth Day

When I first noticed that earth day fell on Good Friday this year, it seemed almost sacreligious to consider it. How could Earth Day possibly compare to the remembrance of the sacrifice Jesus made for me, His death on the cross that we celebrate in a special way on Good Friday? As one of our supporters recently wrote to us, when were we going to declare a “Celebrate Jesus the Lord of Creation” Day?

Our celebration of Earth Day is limited. It’s a time when we can reaffirm our desire to be good stewards of the earth God has made, and which He has entrusted to us. It’s a time when we can remember that we are creatures, and God is our Almighty Creator.

I know many people go far beyond that. I know that in some schools they sing songs of worship to the earth, using the names of ancient Greek goddesses. I know that some people consider the earth almost like their god. I know that to some, people are no more special than striped toads or slugs or centipedes. I know that to some, everything that lives is considered divine. As Christians, we at ECM stop long short of any of that. The earth is not our mother, our divine goddess; it is an object which God created to provide a home and to give a proper environment for sustaining all the various forms of life He created. We do not care for it because we think the soil is as valuable our eternal souls; we care for it because God gave us the responsibility to do so and in doing so we honor Him. We do not care for other forms of life—rare or not, protected or not, vanishing or multiplying—because we think we are a part of them or they are of as much value as we. We care for animal and plant life because it is part of God’s creation for which He gave us responsibility.

I think we care for the earth and all its inhabitants best when we see God as our loving Creator and us as His creatures. God has no beginning and no end, no antecedent and no equal.

The one correlation between Earth Day and Good Friday is that God the Almighty Creator came down to this earth to become our Saviour. On Good Friday, we remember the day the Son of God paid the most awful price for our sins, so that we could go free.

So this Friday I will remember the earth that God gave us, and I will remember that Jesus left His eternal home with the Father to come down here and become our Saviour. Because of sin, the whole creation groans, the Scripture says. When Jesus comes again, He will fully restore creation as God intended it to be and as He originally made it. The effects of our sin will be put in reverse and the earth will once again, even more fully than now, show the glory of the Lord.