Stewardship

I love the outdoors. When weather permits open water I fish like a madman. While I engage in this pastime I contemplate God, and His multitude of blessings on us in the world He created. Though our planet groans under the curse of sin, it is beautiful still. As the fall turns to early winter and the cover of leaves is shed, they expose the human shame of thoughtlesness. I am always shocked to see the vast amount of litter we heap upon Gods` creation, as if it were a matt on which to wipe our feet.
I am reminded of the late 1960`s commercial where a Native American sheds a tear over the soiling of this land and think, he must be an arid husk by now. I try to turn my gaze to a part of the riverbank, woods, or shoreline where I may not see beer cans or soda bottles, cigarette butts, plastic wrappers, discarded CD`s, or snarled fishing line. I have yet to find such a place on any public land, and I walk over alot of it in the nine or so months a year The Lord provides me to fish His waters.
Disconcerted, I look out over the gently rippling water to sooth the sadness. Not suprisingly the sharp corner of twisted metal pipe catches my eye just below the surface, partialy wrapped in a torn plastic shopping bag swaying in the current. Shiny bits of broken glass lie in the sand at my feet, intermingled with parts of a broken plastic bobber. On the surface of the pond, the heel of a foam rubber sandal floats, through a thin film a oil from an ill maintained outboard.
As far as I have been able to figure God gave us the title of stewards over His Earth, an awesome responsibility to be sure, but a simple one. Yet my face burns with shame before the Lord at our inept handling of this concept, that we can season after season so disdain and disrespect the Father who with His own hands, built for us so marvelous a place to dwell.