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Monday, September 26, 2011

Redemption Biz


I read recently that God is in the business of redeeming and if redemption is God’s business, I want in.

But that leaves us with this HUGE question to deal with: "what does redemption mean?" I love this definition: “the act of saving something or somebody from a declined, dilapidated, or corrupted state and restoring it, him, or her to a better condition.” Everything on the earth is in a state of decline; everything, including humans. I mean think about it, as soon as we are born we begin to die. Life leads all of us to one point: death. I know it sounds morbid, but it is the truth. And yet, God seems to put value on that life; regardless of our ever declining nature, our lives seem to be worth redeeming. Which I feel like is pretty great news. With that said, we as part of that declining creation worth redeeming also need to be about this business of saving that which is in decline and nurturing it into restoration. We need to see the value in the life around us just like God seems to do every day.

I want to take this moment to clarify what I mean when I say, "the life around us" or "all of creation." I specifically made "life" INclusive not EXclusive, because it is not just human life we need to see value in and more importantly, it is not only humanity that is in need of redemption. I think that we too often forget that "creation" runs far deeper than just humanity. Yes, the biblical texts state that we are made in God’s image and set apart but there are 5 other days worth of creation in that narrative that we tend to discard. The trees, the water, the animals, the sky, etc are just as much a part of that narrative as humans are. Thus "creation" is inclusive to all and God’s redemption must involve all of creation.

It all goes back to this idea of redemption. All people of the modern world are trained to be consumers. We want what we want now and if we don’t get it, we will throw a fit. On the contrary and in classic God style, God seems to demonstrate something far different: redemption. Redemption of the world and not consuming everything in it. Shouldn’t we follow that example? Careless consumption is the opposite of redeeming, so I think we might have a little "restructuring" to do...

Someone once said, "Convenience equals apathy. And this apathy has become a major contributor of what is killing our desires to redeem." So, today WE have a choice. I have a choice. A) Allow all of my conveniences to render me apathetic to redemption or B) Disregard convenience, forgo apathy, and participate in redemption.


Today, I am going with option B. 

What about you?


Love the earth- theGreenteam

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