While most Christians appreciate the beauty of nature, many don't realize there is a strong biblical basis for creation care. As one non-believer said to me, "Why are you searching for ecological needles in Scriptural haystacks?" With so many lost sheep, who has time to tend the earth? you might ask.

Humankind's first home was the garden of Eden; The word Eden means paradise. The earth was paradise, teaming with beautiful plants, flowers, trees, rivers, and wild creatures. God had created it, and he found it worthy. "And God saw everything that he had made, and it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). The Lord commanded Adam to tend this paradise and keep it, in other words to take care of it. The same word that describes how God commanded us to care for the earth (shamar, or "keep") is used to describe how the Lord wishes to treat us, in the Aaronic benediction: "The Lord bless you and keep you, his face shine upon you" (Numbers 6:24).

Many Psalms express God's love for all He made. "The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and loving toward all he has made" (Psalm 145:17). As Dean Ohlman states in his booklet, Celebrating the Wonders of Creation, "While the Sermon on the Mount expressly states that God values man above the creatures (Mt. 6:25-34), the entire thrust of Scripture--from paradise lost in Genesis to paradise regained in Revelation--is that God treasures and takes pleasure not in man alone but in everything He created."

Perhaps nowhere in the Bible is God's deep compassion on all created things more clear than in the final chapters of the book of Job (38:1-41:34), when the Lord humbles Job and his friends by saying:

Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? Do you know when the mountain goat gives birth? Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?
(Job 38:39-39:1)

The Lord created incredible wonders on earth, and he loves and takes pleasure in the living wonders of creation. The question remains, are we giving glory to God by the way we tend and keep His creation?

"When we remove the evidence of God's handiwork that took Him thousands of years to develop by destroying the miraculous beauty such as was once displayed in the majestic cathedrals of the Big Thicket (a region of east Texas), can we expect anything to follow except despair?," questions a former Texas mayor, Dempsie Henley, in a book about his beloved Big Thicket forest. His sentiments could apply to any of God's creation, across the nation and around the globe. "Have we been good stewards and looked after the Master's business as we should?"