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