Creation Sunday 2002: April 21 (suggested)

Theme: Celebrating Christ’s Reconciliation of All of Creation (Col. 1:19-20)

In 1992 the world's leaders gathered in Rio for the Earth Summit. Ten years later world leaders will gather in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development from August 26 through September 4. Leaders will focus on pollution and human health, pollution and poverty, and a host of issues related to how humanity treats the rest of God's creation such as deforestation and species extinction.

This is an ambitious meeting and agenda. From a biblical perspective, if such activities actually result in creation-care, they are part of a larger, indeed cosmic, movement of God in Christ. As Colossians 1:19-20 proclaims:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (NIV).

This year's Creation Sunday theme is designed to help put human activities such as the World Summit into a biblical and theological context. Many of the Creation Sunday resources and suggestions provided can be adapted to fit the 2002 theme: Celebrating Christ's Reconciliation of All of Creation.

Pollution and environmental degradation present all Christians with new opportunities to love God by loving what God loves, to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, as we strive to be his ministers of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5: 14-21).