Yesterday I asked my youth group a question based around the idea that God made the whole world and gave it to humankind …
If you gave someone something you had made how would you like them to treat it/to be with it?
My favourite, and most thought provoking comment was “to enjoy it”.
Too often we think enjoying our planet is to go and do some recreational activity in some unspoilt place; a way of using our spare time is to “enjoy” the world. But when you think it through this whole idea of mass leisure time is very recent. For many years humans were busy just dealing with surviving. So you couldn’t take a day off to go for a hike or hang out in the garden and read a book because you had to provide food for the family, or you worked in service and maybe you got Sunday morning off, but that was to go to church. Then you’d be back taking care of the family you worked for. This whole idea of a day off for most people is a new thing.
But I’m suspecting God didn’t just wait for the late 20th and 21st century for people to enjoy their creation. I am suspecting God wanted humankind to always be enjoying creation.
On Thursday we went to see Our Town with Michael Sheen in it [a must if you are able to] and two lines towards the end of the play stand out for me and fit in with this whole thing of enjoying creation just for what it is. Both are from Emily who has died in childbirth aged 26 – something that was not uncommon when the play was written in 1938
“Oh Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you”
and then as she realizes how little people appreciate the simple activities of life
“It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.”
We need to slow down, to really look at each other, to really look at enjoy our Earth.
The Creation poem ends by saying that God gives all their amazing creation to humankind to fill, to subdue, to care for – and also, as the young girl my youth group said – to enjoy.
So let’s not wait till our next day off – when too often we are rushing round “having to do things” and trying to fit in “quality leisure” – and take a moment to slow things down, to really see, and to really enjoy.
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Aspirational Adventures 