As I sat in the secretary’s office at church Thursday morning preparing my sermon for Sunday, I looked out the window and saw two chickadees fighting. I watched them flutter and tumble and peck and claw, but I saw no apparent reason for the brawl. There was no food or female in sight, no nest, and no water. Chickadees aren’t exactly territorial or aggressive birds either. Captured by this unfounded fit I declared, out loud, with a sigh, ‘what a pity’. What a pity indeed.

I was then reminded of Romans 8.20-22,

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberate from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (NIV)

We casually mention that the curse applies to creation, and that we ‘live in a fallen world’, but we think of this in spiritual terms almost exclusively. We forget that God cursed the very ground and the whole of creation physically, as well as spiritually. So, those two chickadees fighting over nothing is a result of my sin. Not that mine specifically is the cause…but we collectively is. Leroy Forlines spends a bit of time in his systematic The Quest for Truth discussing the four basic human relationships with the fourth being man to the created order. He notes:

We are designed for a relationship to the created order. Man was designed for the responsibility of exercising dominion over the earth, plats, and animals. This meant he had a management responsibility over the created order…When done for the glory of God, all that we do is a divine service…Work has always been a part of the original plan of God for man. It did not involve the undesirable aspects that it does now, but work has always been a part of the divine plan. This managerial responsibility must also involve a concern for ecology. We must be concerned about the condition of things as we pass them on to future generations.

This means not only is it our divine job to care for the creation, but looking at the Romans 8 passage, we kind of owe it to creation. We messed up and now creation is suffering as well. It’s like in the play Hamlet, when the ruling family is in chaos, the kingdom is as well.

I cannot break up the fight per se between the two chickadees, but I can do my part in keeping a right relationship with the created order. It’s a divine mandate and a Christian imperative. If the whole of creation is in labour pangs, then I need to help her ‘deliver’ the ‘baby’ that supports myself and our generations yet to be born.