Our Bible verse for today: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.” Matthew 25:21 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “It’s a matter of good stewardship”
Hopefully at this point in our study it’s clear to all of us that for Christians, creation care is less about politics than it is about good stewardship and taking care of our Father’s world. What I’m trying to achieve with these devotional messages is a shift in our thinking.
The actual practice of creation care for us as individuals isn’t really very hard. It consists mostly of simple things like disposing of our waste properly, and being economical in our use of resources, and taking steps to minimize the amount of pollution we create, and recycling. Our individual efforts are not difficult or burdensome. And when taken together, with all of us doing our parts, the difference in our Father’s world can be significant.
So the question isn’t can we do it but will we do it? Do we want to, and will we? When it comes to issues of creation care the primary stumbling block for most conservative Christians isn’t that it’s too hard. Instead it’s that political sensitivity I’ve been writing about all month. It’s the belief that creation care is a liberal policy issue and therefore we’re against it, when in fact it is a Biblical stewardship issue and we must therefore be for it.
In Matthew 25:21 Jesus told a parable about a faithful steward who took proper care of the things his master had entrusted him with. The master then commended the faithful steward and expressed his joy over how the steward had conducted himself. The point of Jesus’ story is that this is how our Father in heaven feels when we take proper care of the things He has entrusted us with. That includes His creation. And please note that in the parable there is no mention about what the servant thought or how he felt about the particular resources the master had entrusted him with. The only thing that mattered to him was that those resources were important to the master and therefore they needed to be important to him too.
In the Bible God has made it clear that He values His creation very much, and He has tasked us with taking good care of it for Him. If creation care is important to Him then it needs to be important to us too. It’s simply a matter of good stewardship.
Oak Hill Baptist Church