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The Creation

God stepped out on space,

and looked about and said,

“I’m lonely—

I’ll make me a world.”

And far as the eye of God could see

darkness covered everything,

Blacker than a hundred midnights

down on a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,

And the light broke,

And the darkness rolled up on one side,

And the light stood shining on the other,

And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God reached out and took the light

in the palm of God’s divine hands

And God rolled the light around

Until the sun was made;

Then God set the sun a-blazing

in the heavens.

And the light that was left

from making the sun

God gathered it up in a shining ball

And flung it against the darkness,

Spangling the night

With the moon and stars.

Then down between

The darkness and the light

God [birthed] the world;

And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God stepped onto the earth

And the sun was on God’s right hand,

And the moon was on God’s left;

The stars were clustered about God’s head,

And the earth was under God’s feet.

And God walked, and where God walked

Divine footsteps hollowed the valleys out

And bulged the mountains up.

Then God stopped and looked and saw

That the earth was hot and barren.

So God stepped over to the edge

of the world

And he spat out the seven seas—

God’s eyes fluttered,

And the lightning flashed—

God’s hands clapped

And the thunders rolled—

And the waters above the earth came down,

The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,

And the little red flowers blossomed,

The pine tree pointed its finger to the sky,

And the oak spread out its arms,

The lakes cuddled down

in the hollows of the ground,

And the rivers ran down to the sea;

And God smiled again,

And the rainbow appeared,

And curled itself around God’s shoulder.

Then God raised an arm

And waved a hand

Over the sea and over the land,

Then God said, “Bring forth! Bring forth!”

And quicker than God’s hand could drop,

Fishes and fowls

And beasts and birds

Swam the rivers and the seas,

Roamed the forests and the woods,

And split the air with their wings.

And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God walked around,

And God looked around

On all that had been made.

God looked at the sun,

And looked at the moon,

And then looked at the little stars;

God looked on the world

With all its living things,

And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

Then God sat down—

On the side of a hill for a moment to think;

By a deep, wide river God sat down;

With head in hand God sat.

God thought and thought, till the thought came,

“I’ll make people—men and women! I’ll create them!”

Up from the bed of the river

God scooped the clay;

And by the bank of the river

God kneeled down with the clay

And there the Great God Almighty

God who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,

God who flung the stars to the farthest corner

of the night,

God who rounded the earth in the palm of the hand;

This Great God,

Like a parent bending over a newborn baby,

Kneeled down in the dust

Toiling over a lump of clay

Till it was shaped in God’s own image;

Then into it, God blew the breath of life,

And humanity, men and women,

young and old became living souls.

James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “The Creation”, adapted for today’s meditation, beautifully illustrates an image of what the first moments of creation might have entailed—God spinning and hurling and shaping and breathing life into it. Yes, God shaped a world and a universe—all that is—God established. Then God said, “That’s good!”

Everything God created in those six days, or more accurately, six episodes was good! However today, Environmental Sunday, our focus is on one particular episode, the sixth day—the formation of humanity—men and women, girls and boys, of all ages, shapes and sizes—created in the image of God.  Our focus is on this moment because after breathing life into humanity and offering a blessing upon it, God gave you and me and every other human being the responsibility to care for the Earth and all that is in it. We are to be mindful of anything that breathes, grows, creeps, crawls, flies, swims and remains as still as a stone—anything and everything that sustains life—all life is ours to care for.

God has given us the responsibility; a sacred opportunity, to co-create a world that embodies hope and possibility for the every tomorrow God intends. Ironically, as we co-create this world with God, we come to see, taste, touch and know God in the flesh—know that God is truly with us in the world. The author Dostoevsky once wrote, “Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand… If you love everything, you will comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love.”

What a privilege we have been given—this caring for the earth. It is a privilege we often wear with arrogance. Rather than engaging this task with awe and wonder, we get comfortable and complacent, often failing to recognize that we do more taking from the earth than we do caring for it. We move about as if it belonged to each of us individually more than collectively—casting God’s image of what could be—should be—into the wind.

We are given the responsibility to be caring stewards of the earth and all that is in it, and yet, God does not think we are the most important things in the world. What God does do is to bring is into covenant so that we have the opportunity to care for the world we co-create, but God does not think we are the most important things in on earth.  

This might be news to some of us; God does not think we, you and I, are the most important things on the planet. There is more to life than humanity. What we do and what we choose not to be attentive to affects every single thing God has created!

When we ignore the opportunity to co-create and instead put our personal need for comfort, like driving our cars when we could walk, using chemicals rather than nature’s remedies for pest control or running the dishwasher instead of washing dishes by hand—when putting comfort at the center of our own personal universes, we actively participate in the tearing down rather than the building up of what God intends for all life. We fail to fully appreciate the impact our actions have on the erosion of the earth, the depletion of healthy forests, and climate change. For many of us, it is getting harder and harder to breath every day.

Given the state of our environment, we know it will take us some time and a lot more effort to climb down from the heights on which we have put ourselves. There is much work to do to clean up what we have not taken proper care of and much more to learn about how not to bring our haughtiness into the future. Let’s not forget there is someone, something bigger than us at work in the world. Something bigger. God continually beckons us to create and build a legacy of responsible caring for the precious things God has made. 

We live in a vast universe filled with planets and galaxies that are beyond our comprehension. All of it belongs to God and all of it is bound by the God’s laws of nature.

There is one humbling thought. Though in the grand scheme of it all, you can only exist within the bounds of one thin blue line—called the atmosphere. If we go into space or under the ground on this world, we have to take our atmosphere with us. That’s what we have been given—breath. Breath to live. God stepped out onto space and made a universe, and a world. Then breathed into us, entrusting us to take good care of it all!

Let all that has breath love God. Love the world and take good care of the earth.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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