At some point in their lives, each of my six sons was given a bike. Some took better care of their bikes than others. The one with the greatest challenges “Drew” (name changed to protect the not-so-innocent).

At first, Drew was very excited about his bike with the flashy trim and the pegs on the wheels. It was just “too cool!” That was then. I’m not sure what kids today would say.

Pretty soon, Drew decided it was too much trouble to put his bike in the shed at the end of the day. So, it sat out in the rain.

Then it became too much trouble to put down the kick stand, so he let it fall on to the street when he got off. So, it started to get scratched, and the wheels became bent.

He began to complain that his bike was “falling apart and getting rusty.” And I saw him eyeing up the newest bikes that appeared in the sales flyers.

“Take care of that bike, Drew,” I would always tell him. “It’s the only one you’ve got, and the only one you’re going to get.” When you are raising six sons you have to set some serious limits.

But Drew never learned to take care of the gift that had been given to him out of love. A gift he had not earned but had received, none-the-less. And one day, because he was too lazy to put the bike in the backyard after dinner, someone came along and stole it.

Drew had no more bike. He cried, but that didn’t bring the bike back.

I was reminded of Drew and his bicycle last week when I was visiting a school and saw some of the children had illustrated some poems about Earth Day. Many of them had drawn pictures to go with this poem:

“Every day is Earth Day,

If it’s cold or wet or hot.

Pitch in to save the planet.

It’s the only one we got.”

I wish I had some copies to hand out to the guy who opened his car door and dumped his ashtray full of cigarette butts on the supermarket parking lot.

Or the young woman perhaps driving to work who threw her styrofoam coffee cup out the car window.

Or the adults, young and old, who leave glass bottles, cans and tons of garbage in the sand at the beach instead of using the garbage cans just feet away.

I mean, really, how lazy can you get?

When I see this kind of behavior, I often wondered, “These are the people God put in charge of caring for creation? God must have been partying hard before making THAT decision.”

After all, God was the Creator, the Boss, the Gift-Giver, and God saw that everything he had made was good! Scripture repeats it. It was good! It was very good!

Now, if you had made something really special with your own hands, or head, or heart, something that you believed was really, really good, something you really cherished, would you turn it over to the crowd at the last concert or sporting event you attended?

Well, that is actually what God did. God put us, the unruly crowd, in charge of caring for creation. But we forgot that Creation belongs to God, not to us.

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:2).

God says, “The silver is mine, and the gold: (Haggai 2:8); Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on 1000 hills …: (Psalm 50); The land is mine, you are sojourners with me” (Leviticus 25).

God is inviting us to sojourn with Him, or Her. What an awesome invitation! What incredible trust God has placed in us by giving us so enormous a gift as all of creation and asking only that we love it, care for it and cultivate it for the benefit of all without destroying it.

But too often we have been faithless stewards, and worse, cruel and selfish adversaries of the earth that sustains our lives. So, what can we do, just one person at a time?

Be aware of the treasure, express gratitude, learn how the gift works, use your God-given right to free expression to let others know that you expect them to be responsible for the world that you and your children and your loved ones live in, or will live in.

Most importantly, learn to live a simple life in harmony with God’s gift of the earth. And remember “it’s the only one you got.”

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Copyright © 2022 Mary Clifford Morrell. All rights reserved.