By Not Known
Our sense of location is important. Do we define our space in terms of immediate neighbourhood, country or region? Or do we have a global sense of living in a complex set of relationships with every other human being and with the rest of creation?
Alternatively, do we reach even higher and define our sense of location in relationship with God?
We have seen that we can only truly know ourselves if we know ourselves in relationship with God. The same is true for our sense of location.
We live in God’s world. However we might differ over the details. Genesis 1- 2 is clear in teaching that God created. This is His world. That has many implications, some of which are considered below.
We should care for the earth and never needlessly harm it. We are God’s trustees rather than the earth’s owners. We have the twin responsibility and privilege to ‘work it and care for it’ (Gen 2: 15). It is a real pity that Christians are largely absent from environmental movements and leave them to others who are often pantheistic.
Yet again, the physical earth reflects God’s glory (Ps 19: 1-6). We should meditate on the creation and let it lead us to the creator (Rom 1: 20- 21)
This was am important lesson for the man Job (Job 38- 42). Job was consumed with self-pity and self-justification under his many problems. Just as he had exhausted himself and his friends, God intervened to lift his eyes upwards. As Job caught a glimpse of God who made the place where Job lived and all the things within it, Job gained a rather different perspective. His whining turned into worship.
Beyond this place and its times, we also live in an eternal dimension. Our world is pictured as a footstool on which God rests his feet (Is 66: 1). This imagery is a powerful reminder that the ultimate place in which we live is heaven and eternity.
So let’s not be parochial and small minded about our neighbourhood, country, region or even our globe. These are important, but the ultimate place to which we belong and for which we long is God’s heaven. Let us now live responsibly in the places where God has put us – but living with our eye on the place of heaven