Children’s Message, Sunday April 17, 2005

Children's Message
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Earth Day

I have a confession to make: I am not going to give the children’s message that I thought I was going to give this morning. Do you want to hear what happened?

About 2 weeks ago, I was going through an old file in my office, looking for ideas for a bulletin board and some lessons I wanted to work on for Earth day this month. In that file, I found a note about a dogwood tree that had been planted outside of the parlor windows 15 years ago, in 1990, during a big Earth Day celebration.

I was so excited, I went right down to the parlor, and looked out the window and there I saw this lovely sturdy little tree. “That must be the tree!” I thought. “What a wonderful message to share with our kids”, I thought. . . except. . . it wasn’t the tree.

I talked on the phone with the person who was the educator here at the time and found out a sad fact. The tree that they planted on that Sunday 15 years ago had died. Why? No big reason, not any one person’s fault. Summer came. People were busy. Lots of folks were out of town. Some people didn’t think it was their job to water it, others thought that someone else was doing it, so in the end, the tree died.

This is not the story I wanted to tell you, but I think it is the story I have to tell you. Why do I have to? Because it is our job to take care of our earth, and that means, it is our job to continue to take care of it and nurture it every day.

We have been given the wonderful gift of God’s creation, but also the big responsibility of caring for God’s creation.

If we recycled yesterday, we did a good thing, but we have to recycle tomorrow and next week and next month and next year to fully care for what God has given us. Long and short of it is this: we are never done.

The good news is God’s love is a love of second chances. If you left the water on while you were brushing your teeth yesterday, you have the chance to conserve water and turn off the tap while you are brushing tonight.

At our church, the old tree died, but there is a lovely tree there now—because someone thought it was important to plant a tree, and more importantly, someone thought it was important to nurture and water and prune it after it was planted.

Let’s Pray (you may repeat after me. . . ):
God of creation
Thank you for trees and all that you created
Help us to care for
The things that you have entrusted us with.
Amen.

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