The LA "River"

The nations were angry,
   and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
   and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
   both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” – Revelation 11:18

Today’s Reading: Micah 1-3; Revelation 11

Dear God,

Something that I never noticed before was the last sentence of this passage.

“and for destroying those who destroy the earth”

What responsibility do we have to the earth?

Is it the same as what was given to Adam when you first set him in the garden? It says in Genesis that “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (Gen 2:15). Did that responsibility change after the fall?

Two things that I saw recently made me sad.

The first was when I was driving back to Los Angeles from a recent trip and saw the LA “River”. I put river in quotes because it looks like this.

What were we thinking? What was so important that we changed the original plan that nature had for this river?

Yesterday I was riding home from work on the gold line train from Downtown LA and I looked at the skyline. It was glimmering in the beautiful backdrop of a perfect Los Angeles sunset and something struck me. It was strange to see the beauty of nature behind these towers of human ingenuity.

I felt that sadness again.

I got sad because our civilization seems to be so far from how You originally created the world. Most of us city dwellers never set foot on actual earth. We walk and run on concrete and asphalt. Manicured lawns and tree lined streets are the closest that we get to nature in what has become, for many of us, our natural habitat.

But there’s nothing natural about the city.

So I wonder God, what do you think about what we’ve done with the planet? When I look at the wonderful beauty of untouched nature and compare it to the most beautiful skyline there really is no comparison.

Your architecture far surpasses our own. Too bad we always have to go and try to change things.