Is the Earth Finally Breathing?
03-22-2021
By Maryclare Beche
I can’t believe that it has been a year already since the first global lockdown due to the pandemic. Oh how time flies! I remember seeing videos on social media few months into the lockdown of how wild animals were coming out in the open. One of my friends on twitter posted a picture of clean and clear water with the caption “the earth is finally breathing.” I found the fact that the earth is “breathing” due to less human interaction with it very ironical, especially because it is supposed to be the other way round. After creation, God gave human beings the task to take care of God’s creation.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Gen 1:28, NRSV)
Some bible translations translate this verse as “take care of the fish in the sea...” this is one of the many bible verses where human beings are urged to take care of the earth. We are surely not doing a great job at that. In recent years, there has been an increase in the cries for the environment. There has been a lot of pollution both in the air and water; from wild fires to water pollution to turtles getting trapped in a plastic container in the ocean.
We cannot separate environment and spirituality, they exist together. That is why I believe that, as Christians, taking care of the environment is one of our spiritual responsibility. I mean, how can we continue the ministry of Jesus in an environment that is contaminated? How can we feed a community whose water poisons them with every sip? How do we even do the work of liberation when creation in itself is dying? We cannot speak health to other people when we ourselves are not healthy. So as we go about practicing our vocation, let’s remember that since the beginning, we were called to take care of creation first before anything else.
