In the final session of our Dear Future President series the message focused on one final foundational issue that is important to God, his followers and therefore should be important to the future president: the environment. I used the words environment, the world and the earth interchangeably in the message and summarized the message in the final letter to the president listed below.
Dear Future President,
We live in a world created and owned by God. We are born into
this world and leave this world. We do not bring anything in with us, and we do
not take anything out with us. All we have is this short space of time where we
live together in a symbiotic relationship with this world. How we live can
negatively or positively impact our world. God has entrusted this world to us,
and God holds us accountable for how we live. When we steward the earth as a
gift from God, we all benefit. Dear future president work as the chief steward
for our nation; a shining example to us and others on how to steward well.
As you make decisions about this world consider a story of
Jesus: a parable, designed to teach and make us think. The story is about three
servants given resources by a master. Two servants invest and increase their
master’s gifts. One does not. The master blesses the one who invests and
increases the resources given. He punishes the one who does not. Let us
together, invest and increase the precious resources that are our world. You do
your part; we will do ours.
We will live simply and wisely, performing small actions that
when counted together will be big actions nationally. We will limit our desire
for more and commit to being generous with those in need. Dear Future
president, we humbly ask you to do your part: protect our limited resources,
manage them wisely and advance future technologies that might show an increase
in our resources. Work with others around the world in global partnerships and
efforts to find ways to invest into and increase the resources of our natural
world. In this way, we might secure a future for the generations to come until
Jesus returns.
Dear future president, steward this world as a gift with
wisdom and humility for it belongs to God.
Yours truly,
A follower of Jesus.
The application of stewarding the created world is diverse. The tendency is to see one's own lifestyle as appropriate, necessary or right and others as wrong or extreme. But, perhaps the better task is to learn from each other and provide grace to each other as we try to live this out. What do you do to steward our world?
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