Living Sustainably with Creation

Deut. 22:6,7    An Environment Text

We will be looking at a number of creation/environment texts, as the Climate Change Conference takes place in Glasgow from Oct. 31-Nov. 12.

6 If you come on a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. 7 Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you may live long.

An important point about sustainability is being made here.

If people take the eggs or the young for food, but leave the mother bird, the mother bird can lay more eggs next year and have another brood. If people take just the mother bird, the eggs and the young will die and there is no next generation.

Taking both mother and young also wipes out the present and the next generation.

The eggs or the young will not be as good a meal as the mother bird would be. The temptation to enjoy the good meal now would be very high. But the call is to support a sustainable relationship with the creation. To be content with enough, so that there can be enough next year as well.

The promise at the end of vs. 7 drives this point home, to live sustainably with the creation will mane that things go well and we will have a long life. If human beings live unsustainably with the creation, then the opposite with be the case.

PRAYER:

Lord God, you invite us to live sustainably with the creation. Give us the discipline to be content with enough that we might live sustainably with the creation. In Jesus’ name. Amen.