Is God Green

Good morning. My name is Pastor Rene, one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church, and I wanna invite you to take out of your bulletins these message notes. They look like this because Light Bulb Moments is the name of our brand new summer series. In this series, we're gonna have a variety of speakers talk about one of their personal light bulb moments in their lives, an aha moment, a time when a spiritual truth suddenly came alive in their lives. I'm excited about this, partly because light bulb moments, when we have some cool art direction here on the stage with some light bulbs, but also because you're gonna be drawn in and inspired.

In two weeks, for example, we're gonna hear from Craig Barnes, the president of Princeton Seminary, probably the smartest guy I personally know, and we've asked him to talk about one of his personal light bulb moments, and that's just one example of the many great speakers we're going to have in this series. And now I wanna talk to you about a very personal light bulb moment that I have had just in the last three months or so. And it all revolves around this question, is God green?

This all started for me just in the last three months or so because we've been hearing about the drought, we've been hearing about wanting to save water, we've been hearing about environmental concerns, and my wife and I have started to get into this. You hear a lot about it living here in Santa Cruz. And I asked myself, well, what does the Bible actually say about this? Does the Bible say that God is like pro-environment? I mean, it makes sense, but is it scriptural? And as a pastor, I was intrigued and did some studies.

I mean, this is all just in the last three months or so for me, and I found some verses in the Bible that I personally, as your pastor, in his early 50s exact age, not important, but as your pastor, I found some verses I have literally never seen before in the Bible. This was a real light bulb moment for me because the answer to this question is actually quite controversial, especially here in Santa Cruz.

It all started back in 1967, the whole controversy, when this man, Lynn White, actually published an article. He's a Princeton professor of history, and he did an article in Science Journal called "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis." And he says in this article, published way back in '67, that the real problem, the real danger to the environment actually comes from the Christians. The article was called "The Christian Worldview is the Biggest Danger to the Environment." And what he did in this article is he went to the Bible.

In fact, his main text was Genesis 1:28, where it says, "God gave man dominion over the earth." And he said, "Christianity teaches that nature is not sacred. It's just disposable." He said, "Human beings, according to the Bible, are not a part of nature. They're above nature, and so nature exists just as kind of a thing for humans to exploit." And he called this selfish anthropocentrism. I know that's a mouthful, say it with me. Selfish anthropocentrism. It doesn't really matter, but here's the point. He said, "That is Christianity." He said, "Don't call it Christianity. Call it selfish anthropocentrism. That is the Christian system of thought, and that is the real problem for people who are concerned about the well-being of this planet." Christians are selfish because of their Bible.

Now, this article, again, Science Journal, 1967, became hugely influential. A whole generation of ecologists grew up with this. It's been cited literally hundreds of times, and a lot of people in the environmental movement who may not know much about Christianity, they may not even know any Christians personally, were very influenced by this article. And generally speaking, people who moved in the environmental sciences would hear about this in their history of the environmental sciences class or something similar, and they came to see Christianity as an obstacle to caring about nature.

And if you talk to people in the ecology movement even here in Santa Cruz, and you say you're concerned about saving the planet, and they find out you're a Christian, they'll look at you with surprise because Lynn White told them in college that Christians only care about exploiting the environment. Now, on the other hand, there's a growing movement headed by other people like this guy, Stuart Pym. He's a professor of conservation ecology at Duke University. He has won the Heineken Prize, which is kind of like the Nobel Prize for beer. No, just kidding, that's not true. It has nothing to do with beer. But some of you woke up just then. But it's the prize for earth sciences.

And Pym is not just a teacher. He's actually kind of a champion of endangered species. In fact, in Brazil, there's a species of primate called the golden lion tamarin. You see an example of it on the screen. Very cute, right? And it was on the verge of extinction, and Stuart Pym has actually saved the golden lion tamarin from extinction through his efforts. But here's what's interesting. He was interviewed by the New York Times recently, and at the end of the interview, they ask him, we've heard you're religious. Are you religious? And here's what Stuart Pym says. Yes, actually, I'm a believing Christian. And Christians have an obligation to care for the planet because it was made by God, and it actually does not belong to us.

And so we simply cannot fail to care for oceans or forests or creatures because that would be to fail to fulfill our obligations to God. How cool is that? But that's the opposite of what Lin White says the Bible says. Do you get these opposing views? Lin White, who is not a Christian, says Christians are the problem because of what the Bible teaches. And Stuart Pym, who's a strong Christian, says his concern for the faith was not, for the earth was not blocked by his faith. It was actually triggered by what the Bible says.

So who's right? What does the Bible actually say? In other words, is God green? Or is being green just some kind of trendy California thing? Well, here's what I've come to believe like really recently, just in the last two or three months in my Bible study. I am fired up that actually the Christian worldview is the best possible thing that you could bring to concern for the environment available to the human race. And I think it is super important for us to know and understand this, first of all, so we can be biblical about this issue as Christians.

But secondly, listen, I also think we need to be very clear when we talk about this because this is a topic that matters to a lot of people around us here in Santa Cruz. And listen, would you agree with this? If they think being a Christian means you can't care for the environment, that's going to be a barrier to them receiving the gospel and coming to Jesus. And they need Jesus. So we need to be able to articulate what the Bible really says about this. Everybody in this room does. And I also think it's important because in the Bible, there's actually a vision about creation that will take your breath away.

And it's going to turn the time you spend on the beach or in the forest or seeing a sunset or looking at flowers into another level of worship experience. So today I want to talk about five biblical truths about creation. And I am not talking about politics here. This is not about politics. This is not about human agendas. The Bible has things to say that transcend human politics. How you apply this to your politics is up to you. This is only about what the Bible says.

And as always, I want to give credit to the many sources I use. I list them all at the end of my notes. Ortberg, Keller, our own Mark Spurlock wrote a great paper on this in seminary that I used a lot. They've all helped me just in the last two or three months have my own personal light bulb moment on this. And I'm fired up. So jot these down.

Number one, creation is God's. There is a creator and it's not us. I'd love for us to read this out loud together from Psalm 24. Let me hear it. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. This idea gets expressed a lot in the Bible. Here's Psalm 50:10. Every animal in the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. The Bible is very clear on this. So let me ask you to make sure you get it. Who does the earth belong to? It belongs to God. Therefore, who does the earth not belong to? It doesn't belong to us. That is very, very important. Creation is God's.

And by the way, the fact that creation is God's also means creation isn't God. Creation though belongs to God. The number two, creation is good. Creation is good. All of it is. There's this phrase that gets repeated in the book of Genesis and God spoke and it was so. And God saw that it was good. And then at the end of Genesis, the first chapter, it says, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. God loves his creation. And this has huge implications.

This means that the reason that we love our world, I mean, is there anybody here who does not love mountains? Can I just see that? Is there anybody here who doesn't love sunsets? Is there anybody here who doesn't love oceans and going to see like sea creatures at the Monterey Bay Aquarium? You might remember last October, there were so many humpback whales. I mean, right in front of main beach or the harbor or right off of Capitola. And I told some of you back then in October that I was driving to work and I went along the coast that day and I'm driving down into Capitola and I see some whales spouting.

And so I thought, I don't have an appointment right away. And so I went out to the end of the Capitola Wharf and I rented a kayak for an hour and I paddled out maybe 150 yards. And it's like a whale surfaced and kind of went, hello, Verde. It was so cool. Just kind of like spy hopped and then spouted and then going, that's pretty awesome. And then it fluked and swam under my kayak, like one of those promotional videos you see for Alaska. And then it surfaced on the other side and went, now I'm over here, you know? And I just, I literally could not contain myself. I'm just going, yes, yes, whales are awesome, right?

Well, you know who else thinks whales are awesome? I want you to check this out. This is from Psalm 104. How many are your works, O Lord? The earth is full of your creatures. And then there's the sea, vast and spacious teeming with creatures beyond number. And then I love this, the Leviathan, the whale, which you made, why did God made the whale? To frolic there. When whales spout, when they frolic, I love that word. When they fluke, when they go, hi Verde, you know, when you see them going off the shore, we think that's great. And God goes, oh, that's good, that's good. Love it when they frolic. And that's one reason we think it's good. We're reflecting God when we feel that way.

And here's another reason creation is very good. The Bible says, Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. What's that mean? It means when you allow creation to connect the dots for you, creation means there's a creator. Then suddenly that leads you to wonder and gratitude and joy in your creator. Creation can lead to a relationship with the creator.

You know, my wife teaches from time to time as a guest panelist at public high schools all around the Bay Area. She's a part of the speaker's bureau that has all sorts of different spokespeople from different religions. And when public high school teachers want somebody to represent the Christian worldview, they'll call on the speaker's bureau at that Laurie's a part of. But after one of the classes, she's kind of giving her, it was a philosophy class at a high school, public high school. And she notices the biology teacher standing in the back kind of with arms folded in the back of the classroom.

And he comes up after the class is over and says, can I talk to you for a second? And she's thinking, oh man, I'm more trained in philosophy and theology. He's gonna raise some scientific objections. I'm not sure I'm gonna know what to say. And he waits till all the kids and the teacher are out of the room. And then he kind of looks one way and looks the other. And he says, you know, I wasn't raised religious. I'm not what you'd call a religious person. But, and he goes, I think I'm starting to believe in God.

And she says, really, why? And he says, I've been looking for all these years with my students at the cell. And he says, cell mechanics. He goes, I don't come predisposed to believe any of this. I wasn't raised religious. But he says, cell mechanics are telling me there's a mechanic. He said, there has to be a God. And he's like, like, what do I do about this? You know? And she ends up going out to lunch with him and another teacher. And they had a great conversation. She said for hours about how they're both kind of secretly finding that nature, creation, is drawing them into a relationship with the creator.

Now, if you look at the first half of Psalm 19, it talks about how the world, you know, gives praise to God and draws people into a relationship with the creator. Then the second half of Psalm 19 talks about the Bible and how scripture draws us even further into that relationship. What it's saying is, when you couple the first half, kind of God's big book of creation, with the second half kind of God's little book of the Bible, then you have a super powerful experience.

So here's what I want to, I want to give you some homework. Occasionally I want you to go to, you know, Tahoe, or go to the ocean right here, or go sit in a garden somewhere, or walk in Nicene marks, or look at Julia Pfeiffer Falls in Big Sur, or go to the coast at sunset and take the Bible with you and read that little book while you're sitting in the big book of creation. It's powerful stuff. I was looking at this picture when I was sitting on a beach in Oregon last year. I just took this with my little camera phone and I was listening to my iPod and the song, "This is my Father's World" came on. Biblical truth about what I was seeing there in nature.

And I have to tell you, I literally just started just weeping in praise and worship to God. This is my Father's world, the rocks and trees, the skies, the seas, his hand, these wonders rot. You know, let creation lead you to the creator. And by the way, we could stop right there because there's an argument right there for caring for creation, because when people love the creation that you helped to preserve and care for, maybe they begin the journey of loving its creator. But the world needs to hear this.

First, creation is God's. It's not ours and it's not God, but it's God's. Secondly, creation is good. But number three, the Bible teaches creation is broken. Creation's broken. It's real good, but it's not the way it's supposed to be. There was a man named Francis Schaeffer who wrote a book kind of in response to Lynn White's article about 40 years ago. It was called "Pollution and the Death of Man." And this is really wise, watch this. Here's part of what Schaeffer wrote. "If you say that there's no God at all, nature is all there is. Or if you make nature God and worship it, there's a problem. And the problem is there's beauty in nature, but there are horrible things in nature. There is death and suffering in nature. Why? Because it's not reflecting God's glory perfectly anymore. It's kind of like a broken mirror.

Once it perfectly reflected the creator, but now it's like a broken, you can still see hints of the creator, but because creation's broken, we see him imperfectly." All right, if nature's like a broken mirror, then who broke it? Me, us, the Bible says, "Human beings rebelled against God. And because of that, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life." Creation's God's, creation's good, but creation's broken. And we instinctively know this, it's not working right.

There's a man named Albert Camus, a French philosopher, and he wrote a book called "The Plague." We had to read this book in high school. Anybody else have to read "The Plague" in high school? It's actually a pretty good book. You go, wow, a French existentialist philosopher. But he was actually a very good novelist. His novels are short and fascinating, kind of "Twilight Zone" stuff. And here's what this book is about. This book is set in medieval Europe at a time when the Black Plague is killing everyone. And in this one little village, the few survivors huddle in a house and they debate, "Should we fight the plague?"

And somebody says, "Well, if there's a God, and if everything that happens is part of his perfect will, then we shouldn't fight the plague because it's all just sort of fate." And somebody else says, "Well, I don't believe in God, but I believe in nature. And the plague is just as much a part of nature as we are, so I don't think we should fight the plague either because what right do we have to fight nature? We're just part of nature, but so is the plague, so we shouldn't fight the plague." And finally, the protagonist, the doctor says, "No! All your logic makes sense, and it may be against God, and it may be against nature, and it may be against fate, but as for me, I'm gonna fight it. And if that's what it takes, I'm gonna fight nature and fight fate and fight the plague because I want to live!"

And it's this kind of existentialist statement. But I think he makes an interesting point. See, we do fight sickness. We do fight disease. We do fight war and destruction. We do fight things like the plague. Why? If we really believe that nature was all there was, then what right do we have to fight some disease? It's just as much a part of nature as we are. Then what right do we have to stop some war? What difference does it make if one species kills another species? What difference does it make if one species causes another species to go into extinction? I mean, that's how you got here by that worldview. But inside, we go, "No, no, no, it's not right. Instinctively, we know something's wrong, that death in its many forms like the plague, it's not quite supposed to be this way. Instinctively, I know I can't just walk away from a broken and bleeding creation. I have to take care of it."

And when you feel that way, you're reflecting God, because God doesn't just walk away from creation once it's broken. And that's number four, creation is cared for by God. Creation's cared for by God. One of the earliest signs of this is in the Old Testament, God gives a sign that he'll never destroy the earth again like that, and what's a sign that he gives? A rainbow, that's right. But here's a question for you. Here's where my real light bulb moments started. This is something I never saw before the last couple of months. Who does God give the rainbow sign to? This is a trick question, because you're probably thinking, Noah, or maybe more broadly, humanity. I want you to look at what the Bible actually says.

God says in Genesis 9, "I will now make a covenant with you and with who? Every living creature that was with you, the birds, the livestock, all the wild animals, in fact, every living creature on earth." This is so awesome. This actually, if you're looking for it, this is a thread that goes through the whole rest of the Bible all the way to the last chapter of Revelation. God makes a covenant with every living creature. And in case you missed it, this is so important for God to have you understand that that phrase, every living creature is repeated not once, not twice, not three times, but four times in Genesis 9 alone.

God is saying, I wanna make, what's a covenant? A covenant is a promise with a relationship. It's a promise between two people in relationship. So God's saying, I wanna promise something to everything that lives on the planet. I have a plan for fixing the broken world. Now his plan is an ultimate end, but in the meantime, God's gonna take care of things. And if you look for them all through like the, even the Old Testament law, there's all kinds of verses about how God is caring for creatures and for living things on his planet.

Like, for example, have you ever wondered, we saw what God thinks of whales. Have you ever wondered what God thinks of trees? Probably you've never thought of that. I honestly didn't think of that much until two or three months ago, honestly. And then I started seeing these verses. I have literally never noticed this before in my life. Light bulb moment for me. Deuteronomy 20:19, God's giving instructions to people about warfare. Fascinating verse. He says, when you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, don't destroy its trees by putting an ax to them. Do not cut them down. And then a fascinating sentence. Are the trees of the field people that you should besiege them? It's like God is saying, I know you humans just like cannot stop fighting each other and you're gonna do that, but keep your hands off my trees. Isn't that fascinating?

Here's another one. I mean, there's dozens of these in the Bible that I've never noticed before. How many people have ever heard of the word Sabbath? You've ever heard of the term Sabbath, right? Probably everybody here. Look at this, Exodus 23. Six days do your work, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, do not work, why? So that your ox and donkey may rest. In other words, if you're a donkey, you hope your owner gets converted. You know, this is amazing.

Here's another one. Never saw this before, Deuteronomy 24. It's just a bunch of commands about the law stuck right in the middle of it. Moses throws this little one in, Deuteronomy 25:4. Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. Now some of you are going, wow, I'm glad I came to church today because I have kept that commandment my whole life without ever realizing that I have never muzzled an ox. So I'm good on that one. But listen, why is this even in the Bible? What's this about muzzling an ox while it's treading out the grain? Here's the idea. God says to farmers, and farmers had oxen that like in this picture kind of went around and treaded out grain, pulverized grain, like to make it into flour, right? Now grain was expensive, right? So farmers would muzzle the ox so the ox would not eat their expensive grain and instead they'd let them eat cheap grass later on.

And God goes, no, no, be generous to your ox. Let the ox eat some of your expensive grain. And I'll take care of you and when doing that, you're gonna be reflective of my generosity toward nature. Isn't that fascinating? See the Bible teaches that we're stewards, we're not owners, we're not just users, we're not just consumers, we're stewards, we're caretakers of the earth. Part of God's concern for creation is he put us here to take care of it, to be his agents.

You know, back in Genesis 1, let's read this one out loud together too. Genesis 1:27, let me hear you. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. What's it mean to be in God's image? Part of it means to be creative, to be, you know, have relationships. But part of what it means is you're God's agent on earth. To do what? To help fulfill that covenant, to take care of creation. Look at Genesis 2:15. The Lord God took man and put him in the garden to what? Work it and what? Take care of it. Now that verb work can also be translated to serve or protect. See, Lynn White got it wrong. According to the Bible, our job's not to exploit the garden, certainly not to destroy the garden, it was to take care of the garden. And all of its creatures too.

Have you ever noticed this verse? Proverbs 12:10, the righteous care for the needs of their animals. How trippy is that? That means one sign of righteousness is to take care of your pets and take care of your farm animals. Tons of verses in the Bible on taking care of animals. In fact, William Wilberforce, a Christian who is famous for ending the slave trade in Great Britain, they've made movies about him. The other major cause that he devoted his life to is he started the very first society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. Why? He was motivated by these verses we've been looking at in the Bible.

Now, the Bible does say that humans occupy a unique place in creation. Jesus said, look at the birds of the air. They don't sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? So Jesus says, human life is in some way more valuable to God than the life of a bird. But that's not bad news for the bird. Because according to Jesus, who is feeding the birds? Your heavenly father feeds them. So when you put out a bird feeder, in some strange way, you're joining the work of God. Because you're anticipating something. The great end to the story. Creation is going to be restored. It's not the way it's supposed to be. It's God's and God created a good, but it got broken and he's taken care of it.

In the meantime, even though it's not working right, but here's the really good news, it's gonna be restored. The Bible says in Romans 8, the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Now, why is this different from say Lynn White's view? If you believe that there is no God, that literally physical matter is all that there is, then you also believe it's temporary. It's gonna get discarded. When the sun has converted enough hydrogen into helium, and it's halfway there now, by the way, something new to worry about tonight, the earth is going to get destroyed, right? Or when entropy finally prevails in the universe, as it already does at the Department of Motor Vehicles, but that's a whole other sermon.

But when then the timer goes off and the story's over, there's an end. But the Bible says the end is different than that. The Bible says God created the world good, but then it got broken, but then he made a promise, a covenant with every living creature that one day it's going to be restored. Creation's not gonna be destroyed, it's gonna be redeemed. And in so many places in the Bible, it describes that. You know, when we die, our souls go to be with God, but then one day it says, God's going to restore the earth. It says, there's going to be not just heaven, but a new earth. And it describes that in what terms? As a garden.

Over and over and over again, it talks about, it's like God is going to recreate Eden. And in the very last chapter of the Bible, it says that there's going to be the tree of life again, just like in the garden originally. And the leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations, no longer will there be any curse, Eden again. You know what I think is an interesting little detail? In the Bible stories of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, when Mary sees Jesus, Mary Magdalene, sees Jesus for the first time after he's resurrected, she mistakes him for somebody. She thinks he is the what? The gardener. And in a way he is, because God's the gardener. He created the garden, and now he's taking care of a broken garden. And one day he'll restore the garden and we will live together again in paradise.

Do you see these five points? That's the gospel story. The earth is God's, God created a good, but then it got broken, but he's got a plan and he's going to redeem all of our sorrows and sufferings, including the ones of every living creature. It's pretty awesome. And so what does this mean for you and me today? What are the implications? Well, first gratitude, three things. First gratitude, live in gratitude daily. You know, pay attention to the earth and the things in it, the spiderwebs and the stars and the waves and the fishes. They're all giving God glory just by existing 'cause he made them to frolic and to spin and to grow leaves and we join their praise to God when we look at them and we're just inspired.

And then good stewardship, I take care of the good earth that God made. When you save energy, when you turn out a light, when you save a little water, when you recycle something, it's actually from a biblical point of view, that's a little act of worship. It's not just like ecology, it's worship. In fact, I stuck on the back of the CYT insert in your bulletin, some 10 ways to care for God's creation. These are all ways that actually we've implemented at our house. We've ended up just in the last couple of months, we have cut down our water usage by over a third in our house, like instantly just doing some of these things and I'm so motivated to do this because for me, it's no longer about, well, we're in a drought.

Well, you know, the water board's telling us we gotta cut back on water. What it's about is worship. What it's about is being a biblical Christian. So gratitude and good stewardship and finally remember that I'm doing it because of the gospel, because of the gospel. Because a lot of environmentalists here in Santa Cruz, like I said, they don't actually, some of them know any Christians and they are leery of Christians because they have been taught that we believe we were put on the planet to exploit the earth. But they love the earth. They're expressing a God-given love for the earth that fits in so well with how God feels about the world.

See this whole gospel story of God's care for the planet and his ultimate redemption of the planet, that's something the world longs to know and we know it and we get to share it and sing it and live it. Let me close with a story. My friend, J.R. Lufbero up at Mount Hermon told me a true story that his friend Greg Roth, who lives up in the Pacific Northwest told him. Greg's mom, Dorothy Roth calls him up one day and says, hey Greg, she's 87 years old and she lives in a nursing home. And she calls him up and says, hey, Greg, would you pick me up today? I'd like to go to a baseball game with you.

And he thinks to himself, I've literally never gone to a baseball game with my mom in my life, but all right, she's 87, whatever. I'll go to a baseball game. And he drives up to the nursing home and she comes out with her walker and on her walker is a baseball glove. And he kind of smiles and he goes, so mom, you're gonna catch a fly ball today at the baseball game? That's cool. And she goes, no, Greg, I'm not gonna catch a fly ball. I'm throwing out the first pitch. And he thinks, mom is insane. What is, she's demented. And he says, really mom? She goes, don't laugh as if you're humoring me. I really am. It's Dorothy Roth Day today at the Seattle Mariners Ballpark.

And he says, what? And he gets to the ballpark and it is Dorothy Roth Day at the ballpark. I kid you not. Because what happened was somebody at the Seattle Mariners publicity department discovered that she was the last surviving member of one of those women's baseball teams from the 1940s. Anybody ever see the movie, "A League of Their Own"? Anybody ever see that? Remember the Rockford Peaches that that movie was about? Well, she was on their rival team that played the Rockford Peaches and she's the only one left at 87 years old.

And so the Seattle Mariners go, that's awesome. We're gonna do a spotlight on those old women's baseball teams and we're gonna have her here to throw out the first pitch. He says, they get to the ballpark. Nine different media outlets are interviewing his mom. And he's like, this is incredible. And he says, they go out of the tunnel and they walk onto the beautiful green field up there. The Mariners ballpark is amazing. And then he says, as they walk to the pitcher's mound on the video screen, they actually do a big kind of recap like this is your life, Dorothy Roth.

And they talk about the team she played with. They get some old black and white pictures from her playing on the team. They talk about what she's doing now. And the announcer says, and now to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, would you please welcome Dorothy Roth. And he says, it's a sellout game. The whole crowd stands up and they start cheering. And he's like, this is unbelievable. It's like a dream. And he's looking at his mom standing on that beautiful green grass. And he's thinking how she loved baseball. Never been to a baseball game before, but he knew that she loved baseball.

And he's thinking here she loves this game. She loves the symmetry of this game. She loves the beauty of this game. And she ever only got to play it on kind of cut rate dirt fields with the women's league. And now here she is throwing out a pitch at a beautiful new park in the majors. What must my mom be going through? And so they walk out and she's heading all the way out to the pitcher's mound. And he's like, mom, most people kind of go halfway between the pitcher's mound and home plate when they throw out the, and she goes, Greg, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it right.

And she goes all the way to the pitcher's mound. She sets aside her walker and he says she gets this gleam in her eye. And he says, she lit, he says, I could tell she'd been thinking about this and practicing it because she literally gives a leg kick and fires this pitch in that was a perfect strike right down the middle of the plate. The whole place is just going crazy. The guy who was the catcher walks up and autographs the ball and hands it to her and says, man, today we are all Dorothy Roth fans and the stadium's cheering and they drive home at the end of the game.

And she's sitting there just smiling in the passenger seat. And then she looks over at him and says, Greg, today was one of the best days of my life. And he says, yeah, it was pretty cool, mom. And she says, you know, I think this is something like what it's going to be like when we go to heaven. And he kind of smiles and says, you think there's gonna be baseball in heaven? And she says, that's not what I was talking about, Greg, like idiot. She says, she says, no, in three ways. She says, first of all, we're going to be able to see each other at our peak performance level. It's like we're all going to be throwing perfect strikes in our resurrected body.

And she said, secondly, we're going to be honored for things that happened a long time ago that we've almost forgotten, that cup of cold water or visiting that person in the hospital. And even, you know, the person in charge of the whole game, the Prince of Peace will come up to us and say, well done, thou good and faithful servant today. I'm a Dorothy Roth fan. Isn't that a great picture of heaven? But she said, best of all, on the new earth, she says, as much as we loved our earth, our life for its beauty and for its symmetry, when we walk into the new earth, everything in the past is going to seem like a game played on parched brown fields compared to the green grass of paradise, because we'll see, ah, this is how the game was meant to be played.

Heavenly Father, I just pray that as we look forward to your redemption of the planet, we don't take this current good but broken world for granted. Thank you for the goodness of this earth on which we live. Help us to be good stewards of it. As part of your plan to redeem it from its groaning, we need to be good stewards of it. And Lord, we not just think about the creation, we also need your gift of new creation. Because right now, people in this world feel like, yeah, it's not just the planet that's broken, it's my life that was created by God good, but now broken. And they're weighed down by guilt or regret, depression or sadness, brokenness.

God, would you begin to bring that healing from the curse, that new creation of our life to those lives right now? Help them to just receive Jesus into their lives to begin that redemption. And then God, we don't wanna just take for granted as we leave this place, the wonder, as we walk out the store of trees and skies and birds and the ocean coast and the redwoods, or of bodies and faces as our great creator, as the one who spoke all of that into existence, we wanna give you our wonder and our gratitude and our praise. Thank you so much, God, for all of that. We love you, our creator and redeemer, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.