How My Children Taught Me to Love the Earth

As you read this, yesterday was Earth Day. A day I previously gave zero thought to. Like many evangelical Christians, I grew up giving very little thought to the earth - it was merely the backdrop or set God built to place humanity into. Occasionally, I’d come across something so awe-inspiring that I was momentarily shaken from my stupor, but it always ended there. 

The phrase, “It’s all gonna burn,” pretty sums up the full extent of the theology I was taught regarding all things earthly and temporal. This earth is not our true or final home, we are “foreigners and exiles” here. But after 36 years of walking this earth, I’ve come to reject that theology, that at best, ignores the earth, and at worst, has caused irreparable damage to the home God gave us, as well as our souls.  

The lynch pin for me came in the form of my children. Children who came pre-programmed with awe and wonder and a sense of oneness with nature. No one had to teach them to care about the earth. Lachlan naturally looked down into the grass and saw and loved all the creepy crawlies he found there. He cannot walk past a rock without admiring the colors, the crystals, the structure – and he insists I don’t either. 

Meryn naturally looked up into the skies and called the birds, her birdy friends. Still at age five, she is convinced that when she tweets at them, she can speak their language. Once, when she was three, she started crying as she looked up into the stars because “my twinkle buddies are so beautiful.” This girl naturally considers the entire Earth (and beyond) her friend. 

When Lachlan was four, I was worried he might grow up to be an ecoterrorist, because he took the flattening of trees and upheaval of habitats so deeply and personally when he saw the scope of development happening around us. He accidentally coined the term “developmentors” - an unintentional portmanteau of developers and dementors from Harry Potter. Every time we drove past another new development, he would lament, “Don’t they care about the lizards, and coyotes, and rabbits, and foxes, and snakes who live there? It was their home first!”

My children’s love for this planet and the myriad flora and fauna runs deep. My kids understand something I never did at their age, and so many of us never will - we are of the earth. The dust I walk upon is the same dust that God breathed their life, their ruach, into to create the first humans. In her book of devotions, Sacred Belonging, Kat Armas writes, “In the opening chapters of Genesis, the Bible affirms a mutual and cyclical relationship between dirt and our bodies. The Bible is far from a book of science, but both agree on that point. Science teaches us that all the elements that make up the human body are found in the soil… we belong to the earth, and she belongs to us too.” 

In the creation narrative, we see that God’s original design for creation was one of harmony, peace, flourishing, and shalom. With God, with each other, and with nature. But when sin broke through the cracks, it fractured that harmony. It warped our understanding of the charge to have dominion over – to care for and tend to – until we believed we were granted the right to dominate – to colonize and plunder.  

But as with all things, our prayer as believers should be that it would be “on earth as it is in heaven.” That we would partake in ushering in The Kingdom of God. That we would be active participants in the ongoing healing, renewing, and restoration of all things as we await the day when Christ will return and make all things new through total redemption. 

One way I can do that is by tending to and caring for this remarkable planet. Will my small act of rebellion against the plundering of our earth and her gifts make even a dent in the macro-problems we’re facing? Probably not. But it will go a long way in fostering my own rightful posture towards all creation.

For me, that looks like spending time in nature whenever possible. I write this essay from my parents’ porch on six mostly wild acres. When I look up from this glowing screen, I see myriad trees and wildflowers galore. I hear the calls of at least seven bird species and watch as robins, cardinals, woodpeckers, and chickadees flit around and chase each other away. It rained this morning, and the scent of petrichor and the wildflowers is thick in the air. Now and then, a grasshopper snags my attention as she pounces out of the glistening long grasses in my peripheral vision. And I give thanks for all of it – including the snakes I know are hiding out there somewhere.

In my own backyard, we plant only native species that will contribute to the renewal of the natural flora and fauna. I recently heard my five-year-old daughter gently chide a friend who was afraid of a bee, “Bees aren’t scary. They’re pollinators. Without them, we wouldn’t have these beautiful flowers.” 

I’m convicted about the waste I create and contribute to landfills. This spring, I have committed to purchasing only secondhand clothing whenever possible. Again, am I solving any of the environmental or humanitarian crises caused by the fast fashion industry? No. But I am cultivating a sense of awareness and gratitude for what I have. I am dismantling my own perceived need for the next and the newest. And I can sleep a little easier knowing I, personally, am not contributing to that particular problem.

But that’s just what’s right for me. And what do I even know? Frankly, a lot less than I used to think I did. The older I get, the less I know. The more I realize that I still have everything to learn. And my teachers don’t need to be PhDs or experts, though they certainly have plenty to teach me. 

I learn daily from my children, who haven’t lived long enough to convince themselves that what they feel in their souls is wrong or sinful. When my kids look at the world around them, they know that they are of it and it is of them. We are all created by the same life-giving Creator. No one had to teach them Latin for them to innately live out of the fact that the English words humility and human both come from the Latin word humus - meaning “earth, dirt, soil.” They have a natural posture of humility in their groundedness, their nearness to the earth. 

I learn from the female elephants who circle up and face out to protect the most vulnerable in their herd. I learn from the humpback whale who heard the death cries of a solitary whale and swam hundreds of miles to sit vigil with her while she died. I learn from the cycles of life itself - blooming, thriving, fading, and resting. And the thumbprint of the Creator in all of it. 

I learn from Jesus, who noticed the lilies and the sparrows. Jesus, who retreated into the quiet of nature to recharge and connect with God. Jesus, who himself, became part of this creation by putting on flesh and stepping down into this earth. Jesus, in whom “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” Jesus, who is “before all things, and in whom all things hold together.”

I learn from all creation, for creation shows me more of the Creator. And I care for creation because I know that in doing so, I align my heart and priorities with those of the Creator.