Made from Earth, Made to Care

Jono Ingram shares how he lives out the call to care for creation.

There is a small, slow flowing creek where I live. The rocky banks show the remnants of an ancient lava flow, and mounds of grey-blue saltbush break up the golden landscape.

Every morning I go running along the paths around the creek. It is open and feels kind of expansive amidst my otherwise suburban surrounds. As I move along the pathway on the top bank, I see a Great Egret standing in the shallows, her regal white feathers unmoving as she stands deathly still, stalking tadpoles. A blue fairy wren darts in and out of shrubs of prickly wattle, small showers of golden pollen rain down each time he lands. High above me, a wedge tail eagle, Bunjil the Creator Spirit as the Wurundjeri say, soars overhead.

As I run, I imagine that Bunjil can see the same steel excavators on the other side of the creek, turning over the soil. Trucks and machinery are laying concrete and roads. Houses are popping up around the creek at a speed you can hardly imagine. It feels like only yesterday that the view from here was unimpeded to the Macedon Ranges beyond. But now, the kangaroos are being pressed in, confined to the smallest areas of native grassland that remain. “Wildlife corridors,” we are told.

I can’t imagine being asked to live in a hallway.

My spirituality has been deeply shaped by being outdoors and in nature - running, hiking, camping, and swimming in rivers and oceans. I regularly find myself coming back to the biblical image of a garden. Our story begins in a garden where the humans are called to tend and care for the earth (Genesis 1). Ezekiel 47 uses an image of a revitalising river flowing out of the temple, restoring the land as it flows. And finally, we bookend the story in Revelation with an image of the Tree of Life standing central, and the garden over taking the city (Revelation 22).

As I run through my neighbourhood in this greenfield growth corridor, this is not only my ultimate hope — it is my hope for right here and right now.

This year I’ll be coordinating the planting of 11,000 native grasses, wattles, and saltbush. Community members and school students will come down to sites around our creek, grasslands and seasonal wetlands. They’ll learn about the geology and the connection Wurundjeri have had to our place for thousand of years. They will be kitted out with gloves, forestry shovels, tube stock, and tree guards. Where the soil has been degraded by weeds, we’re claiming back the grasslands. Where animals and birds once had their homes, we’re working to provide habitat again.

I push my shovel into the earth. For me, this kind of work is meditative. This is what it means for me to be a follower of the Creator God. Humans made from humus, created to tend and care for creation. I imagine the Creator standing alongside me, reminding me of this vocation, to care for the wildlife, to revitalise the city with rivers of clean water, to see native plants and grasslands which will over run our suburban streets.

I grab a tube stock of wallaby grass and press it into the cool earth.

“On earth, as it is in heaven,” I pray.

This reflection is from week one of our Season of Creation Bible Study Series, 'All Things New – Faith, Creation, and the Wider Story of God'. This five-week series explores how God’s work of renewal embraces all of creation. From Genesis to Revelation, discover how our faith calls us to both personal transformation and collective, hope-filled action. Download our study here -www.commongrace.org.au/season_of_creation_bible_study