“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17
“Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”…And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” – Revelation 21:1-3
We remain warmed by the glow of Easter. On this new day we join with the people of the planet to celebrate Earth Day. We celebrate this day with the knowledge that the Earth and all things within it are woven together by the creative spirit of God. The Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer has entrusted us with the stewardship of creation. In this season of new beginnings let us renew our commitment to take care of that which God has placed into our hands.
In the spirit of Eastertide and Earth Day, I’d like to share with you a poem by Phuc Luu, a Christian author, philosopher, and poet.
https://www.theworkofthepeople.com/new-earth-flourishing
New Earth Flourishing
Out of the darkness and the deep
Out of the muck and the mire
The mud and slush
We will emerge, together
The days without forward and future
Will be a distant memory
Only a story told as a reminder
A marker of where we’ve been
Distant and separated
From each other
From our humanity and breath
From our warm embraces and tender touch
Buried beneath
our own sense of self
in exclusion to anyone else
We will arise and we will receive
receive a new heavens and new earth
new vision and new bounty
for this land is decimate no more
not by hands choking, beating, and breaking it
But through our connection to it
Connections drawn together by the Spirit of Breath
Spirit of Life
Well of vitality
Arise with the one who stood and sat and slept
In the darkness with us
Arise with the one who bore our diseases
who hid our shame
Who suffered by our ignorance and our sin
The one who gives us breath anew
In this flesh and bones
In this new body made whole
From the wounds dug deep in his skin
Scars as reminders
Of anger, hatred, othering, animosity, toward each other and the divine
Rejecting goodness
Wholeness
Peace
For emptiness of power and profit
Of security and safety
Of our own homes and countries
Of nations and borders
Fractured people
Together with Son of adam,
human and humus,
dirt and dust,
We are rooted, climbing upward
Weaving under earth
Reaching toward sun and rain
Toward nurture and nourishment
To grow toward who we are
And meant to be
A semblance of the hope
Of the divine
To rise
To breathe
To be
Again
We rise
