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

Welcome back! Love the earth!

Welcome back to HSU all you earth lovers! And if you're new to HSU, the Greenteam would like to give you a HUGE welcome! I hope all of you had an AWESOME summer! Back in college...ready for fun...maybe not so excited about classes...but college is cool though right...?

I hope we made our mark during NSOlodeon! The Greenteam put out water stations near the dorms during move-in day JUST FOR YOU. So you should feel special. Consider it as an early birthday present for you freshmen and transfers (and everyone else) who grabbed a cup of water from our stations. PLUS we partnered with The Arborday Foundation and donated 450 trees to be planted over the course of the next year! So, you're welcome for that. Oh and we gave away these awesome whinsheild shade things you put in your car to keep the sun out. If you'd like one (for FREE) just send us an email of you begging for one and we'll hook you up big time.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!! There's a free HSU Camelback/Nalgene competition still going
 on! Email a picture of the Earth being loved to hsugreen@gmail.com by 2pm on Friday9/9/11 and we'll pick a winner!!! It could possibly be YOU! 


Check us out on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/hsugreen


I was picking up my mail from the post office, and as usual, all I had were some advertisements for events around school. So I decided to recycle them in a not-so-far-away paper recycling bin placed strategically near the post office. And still, I saw people throwing away their paper mail in the trash. Friendly reminder, PLEASE RECYCLE! It's honestly not that hard to do. The earth will love you for it.

I did a recent search in "green" news and found an article about a city not too far from here: DALLAS (shoutout!). Here's the article: CLICK HERE. Basically, the article was talking about how Dallas just became the first major city in Texas to launch carton recycling! How cool is that?! So go back to the days of elementary school and remember lunch time and how you had that small carton of milk. And just think, NOW YOU CAN RECYCLE IT!!! Here's a statistic from the article: "In 2008, only 18 percent of U.S. households had access to carton recycling programs. Today, this number has nearly doubled to almost 36%, with cities in over 40 states representing approximately 40 million households now accepting cartons in their curbside collection programs. Dallas increases these numbers by an additional 235,000 households, and is setting the bar for other cities in the state of Texas to follow suit." 
Here's another statistic: "Last year, the City of Dallas recycled more than 50,000 tons of materials and is on track to recycle nearly 65,000 tons this year. Carton recycling will help the city toward their 31% diversion goal for the year. By increasing their recycling rate and coming up with innovative ways to increase waste diversion, the city saved $1,185,260.21 of landfill space." 


So if you thought recycling and being green was a joke, IT'S NOT. It's actually super practical and super economical!


Keep on being green. Keep on loving the earth. Stay cool, my friends. Peace out.

Enjoy this earth-friendly video by The Fun Theory: