This Sunday is a Second Sunday and it's been just over a year since we started focusing these Sundays on tangible ways to care for the world and be people of justice. It's been our desire to show kids how they can join with God aa a world changer, harbinger of hope, and a steward of the earth. Creation care work helps kids to connect to the good work of "exercising dominion" well and caring for what God called good.
This week, Olivia, Kathy, and our Union Kids team will start working on tending a garden at 415 Westlake with the help of our kids, as well as making a delicious tossed salad for the Second Sunday meal. These endeavors care for our earth and feed our community.
What about engaging kids in creation care other days of the week at your home? You may not have a green thumb or space for a garden, and that's ok. You and your kids can also try some other creation care, like this suggestions from author, Meredith Miller:
Picking up trash in your neighborhood while on a walk. Just make it a habit, rather than turning into a full clean up day.
Compost your food scraps (which many of us already do). Maybe even create a compost or worm bin in your own yard to enrich the soil.
Become members of a zoo or aquarium, an animal conservation group, or a botanical society to better understand what the challenges and opportunities there are when it comes to stewarding our world. (I have joined the Washington Farmland Trust.)
Listen to a conservation-themed podcast for kids like Earth Ranger Emma or watch PBS Kids' Wild Kratts to learn more about the amazing creatures that God has created. These can inspire kids (and adults)!
Our Union Kids are often already thinking about these things and we take our cues from them many times. You may know that both the communion glasses and reusable coffee cups were both instituted from requests by Union Kids to be more sustainable. This is creation care.
This is good work, worship in action on a Second Sunday and many other days of the week. I'd love to hear what other families like to do to care for our earth. Ideas are welcomed!
Genesis 1:11-13 (NIV)
"Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day."
Genesis 2:15 (NIV)
"The Lord God took the human and put them in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."