Heavenly Father, You cause Your sun to shine and Your rain to fall on the just and the unjust. You show Yourself immensely loving to all Your creatures—people of every tribe and tongue and nation, animals and plants of all sorts, Earth and Sun and Moon and all planets and stars in the heavens. Indeed, You call every one of the hundreds of billions of stars by name! Your understanding is infinite, Your patience amazing, Your grace abounding, Your justice perfect. We praise and glorify You for all that You are and all that You have done.
When we consider, Father, what we were as You first created us, we are amazed. What is man, that You are mindful of him? You made us, unlike every other creature, in Your image, after Your likeness, to reflect Your character, and You crowned us with glory and honor. As You delighted to make everything out of nothing, so we reflect Your image better and better as we come to understand and use Your creation increasingly wisely to make more and more out of less and less. You delighted to bring order out of chaos, separating light from darkness, and seas and dry land and skies from each other. Likewise You equipped us with the skill to bring greater order out of lesser order in our work as makers and traders. You made vegetation yielding its seed after its kind to cover the earth, and gave us wisdom to cultivate and guard the land. You made the fish of the seas, the birds of the air, and the animals to live on the dry land, and designed them for our rule. All of these You made with amazing variety, showing Your creativity and love for diversity in the midst of order. And You made mankind, male and female, sheltered us first in the Garden of Eden, and blessed us and told us to be fruitful and multiply, spreading out from the Garden to fill and subdue and rule over the whole earth and everything that lives in sea and sky and land, transforming wilderness into garden. When we contemplate these things, we stand in awe and wonder.
Yet, our Lord and God, we also see what we have made of ourselves, and of this earth that is Yours and that You have given to us. Not content to be subject to You, and ungrateful for Your gift of the fruit of all the trees in the Garden but one, we, in the person of our first parents, thought to become like You, indeed even above You, by asserting our judgment over Yours and taking of that one tree You had forbidden us. Ever since then, each of us has followed that pattern of ungrateful discontent, that prideful effort to usurp Your sovereignty. Though You wrote in our very hearts laws the keeping of which would have meant harmony and blessing among ourselves and between us and You, and though by nature we know those laws to be holy and righteous and good, we have broken every one of them, bringing harm not only to our fellow people but also to the earth itself, through our own destructive activity and through the curse You put on the earth because of our sin, subjecting it to futility and the bondage of decay—and rightly so, since we in our sin act as its covenant representatives. You made us to rule the earth for Your glory, and we sought to rule it to ours instead, justly bringing condemnation on ourselves and all over which we rule. To our shame, Lord, though You commanded us to bring life and health to all the earth, we brought death and decay and ruin.
But when in Your holy judgment You subjected both us and the rest of Your creation to decay and death, You did so in the sure and certain hope—sure and certain because You Yourself fulfill it—that we and it would be delivered by the marvelous, atoning and reconciling work of Your unique Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He affirmed Your love for the physical world when He became flesh and tabernacled among us. He took our sins on Himself when He died on the cross, becoming Himself the atoning sacrifice to satisfy Your justice. In His love for the earth, He made it His tomb. And, having appeased Your wrath, He rose from the dead in triumphant vindication over death and sin and hell itself. In His resurrection He is the firstfruit not only of our personal, bodily resurrection, but also of the restoration of all creation from its bondage to futility. You were pleased that in Him all Your fullness should dwell, and through Him You were pleased to reconcile all things to Yourself, whether on earth or in heaven, thus making peace by the blood of His cross!
Oh, Your amazing love, heavenly Father, that You should give Your unique Son that whoever believes in Him might be saved from Your wrath!
But You did not stop there. You also sent Your Holy Spirit to indwell and seal everyone who trusts in Christ. Though we were dead because of our sin, this Spirit makes us alive because of—not our but—Christ’s righteousness, graciously imputed to us and received as a gift by faith alone! This makes us debtors to live not after our sinful nature but according to the Spirit who dwells in us, who has made us Your children, by whom only are we able to put sin to death. He is not the spirit of slavery but the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!” He bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him. Because of Him we understand that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that You are going to reveal to us. The whole creation waits eagerly for the revealing of Your children—for our living out more and more consistently, day by day, the life and love of our Lord Jesus Christ. As that happens in part in this age, the creation’s bondage diminishes; and when all Your children at last are brought to You and perfected by Your sanctifying work, the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain perfect freedom.
Until then, gracious Father, along with the rest of creation, we groan inwardly as we await our final adoption, the redemption of our bodies. This is our hope; teach us to wait for it with patience, and by Your Spirit teach us to pray for what we ought, as we ought—and thank You that when we find ourselves at a loss for words, He intercedes on our behalf! While we await our final adoption, please fill our hearts with love and wisdom so that we might bring You honor in thought, word, and deed. Show us how to use our minds, our bodies, our time, all of our relationships with our fellow men and women and with the earth itself and all living creatures, to bring life, truth, and love in place of death, lies, and enmity. May we practice that godly dominion to which You called us, laboring lovingly together to enhance the fruitfulness, the beauty, and the safety of the earth, to Your glory and our neighbors’ benefit. Cause us to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with You.
These things we pray in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, giving glory to You and to the Holy Spirit, God in three Persons, world without end. Amen.
