Faith Matters 41: For The Gardner News, May 5, 2007
Living Downstream
The Nashua River runs close to our home in Lancaster. Most of the year the river is hidden by tall pines, but during spring floods we have a water-view. And in years of severe flooding, we actually have water-front property. A few decades ago the Nashua used to run pink or green on days when the paper mills upstream discharged their waste products. Even now, in spite of how inviting it looks in the heat of the summer, the river is still not safe for swimming or fishing. If the chemicals don’t get you, the fecal bacteria accumulated from years of using the river as an open sewer just might. Living downstream on a river, you are at the mercy of whatever happens upstream.
When it comes to the natural world, we are all living downstream. We are all heirs to what happens or happened in previous generations upstream. And we, in turn, pass on blessing or curse to those who live downstream from us. Many people I know have recently had lawns and soil replaced around their homes because of industrial pollutants upstream in time.
We live downstream in a world that doesn’t belong to us, even though we act as if it does. All of Scripture proclaims along with the psalmist: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.” Even if we have a piece of paper confirming our ownership of a small plot of land, this earth, the hills and fields and forests and rivers and sky belong to God. God created them, and pronounced them good.
Our incarnational faith celebrates the physical and the spiritual, both of which God calls good. In Jesus Christ, God took on human flesh and entered into our physical and human world, transforming it and transforming us. The physical world is infused with God’s Spirit, revealing God to all who choose to look. Over and over the glory of God is revealed to us in this holy temple we live in and are called to care for—for its lands, for its rivers, for its oceans, for its creatures. God created the world and is always renewing it, and recreating it. God calls us to be part of the renewal of the world.
Increasingly, people of faith, are starting to understand that living faithfully means taking care of the world we live in. Living faithfully means learning to live in ways that assure a future for our children and being responsible stewards of the world God created and set us in. We are called to embrace and love the physical world, just as we are called to embrace and love and care for our physical bodies and the bodies of fellow men, women and children.
We may own the air rights to a piece of property, but we don’t own the sky. We don’t own the ocean of air that surrounds us. But we have a responsibility for tending it, for keeping it clean, for making sure that those who live downstream from us, our children and our children’s children, will live in a world that supports and nourishes life.
What we do today affects the quality of life of future generations.
Part of our legacy as Christians is to teach our children to love and appreciate and honor God’s world. We must teach them to treasure it, to tend it, and to recognize God’s glory in it. Only then will their children, and their children’s children enjoy a time when the rivers run crystal clear again and they can swim and play and fish in them. May we all live in the present so that those who live downstream from us will also be able to see God’s glory reflected in the rivers and streams of their time.