Over the next three days, I shall share three biblical principles for environmental stewardship, written by Dr. Calvin B. DeWitt.

1.  Earthkeeping Principle:
AS THE LORD KEEPS AND SUSTAINS US, SO MUST WE KEEP AND SUSTAIN OUR LORD'S CREATION.

Genesis2:15 expects Adam and Adam's decendants to serve and keep the garden.  The Hebrew word upon which the translation of keep is based is the word "shamar" and "shamar" means a loving, caring, sustaining keeping.  This word also is used in the Aaronic blessing, from Numbers 6:24, "The Lord bless you and keep you."  When we invoke God's blessing to keep us, it is not merely that God would keep us in a kind of preserved,m inactive, uninteresting state.  Instead, it is that God would keep us in all of our vitality, with all our energy and beauty.  The keeping we expect of God when we invoke the Aaronic blessing is one that nurtures all of our life-staining and life-fulfilling relationships-with our family, spouse, and children, with our neighbors and our friends, with the land and creatures that sustain us, with the air and water, and with our God.

And so too with our keeping of the Garden-in our keeping of God's Creation.  When Adam, Eve and we, keep the Creation, we make sure that the creatures under our care and keeping are maintained with all their proper connections-connections with members of the same species, with the many other species with which they interact, with the soil, air and water upon which they depend.  The rich and full keeping that we invoke with the Aaronic blessing is the kind of rich and full keeping that  we should bring to the garden of God-to God's creatures and to all of Creation.  As God keeps believing people, so should God's people keep Creation.

Tomorrow: Sabbath Principle