Enduring Principles Series: Sacredness of Creation

For Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Draw or describe examples of how nature makes visual the cycle of loss, grace, and recovery (p. 11). How does that give us hope for healing our world?

2. Susan wrote: “We are called to help God restore broken, sad places to their intended goodness and wholeness. We call it bringing forth the cause of Zion” (p. 11). How does that support or differ from your understanding of Zion?

3. Think about the area around your congregation—places and people near your church. Where are the broken or sad? How is your congregation being called to help God restore its “intended goodness and wholeness” (p. 11)? What gets in the way? What would it take to try?

4. Remember an experience when spirit and element were “inseparably connected” and “equally cherished” (p. 12). How did that bring joy to your life? How can you share that joy with others?

5. Imagine your life if your new day began at sunset with a meal and bed. God continues creating through the night, and in the morning you join what God has begun; the day is half over and you were not an active participant. How does that help you view yourself not as conqueror or master but as a participant “in a network of interdependent organisms flourishing only in the Creator’s hand” (p. 11)?

—Mary Gill, Lifelong Discipleship Specialist

Discernment Activity

An important part of discernment is becoming clear about the question or questions we need to bring to God. What do we need to hear, see, or feel to be more responsive to God’s purposes in us and creation?

Through prayer and reflection, listen for the question about the sacredness of creation that seems most important for you to offer to God now.

1. Read the article again and mark sections that bring up questions for you. Make notes in a journal or on paper, listing questions or comments as you read.

2. Ask God to guide you in identifying your questions about the sacredness of nature and creation. You may want to reflect on some of the questions below.

   • If God’s creation is good, why is nature sometimes destructive or violent?
   • Does God control everything that happens in the created world and cause nature to act in either destructive or life-giving ways?
   • Both nature and human beings have potential to be life-giving or destructive. How do these paradoxes affect your understanding of God and the cycles of life, death, and resurrection?
   • For Apostle Skoor, water (the sea) brought both death and healing. What is your experience of nature as a source of death and/or healing? How do you hold these two realities within the view of creation as sacred?
   • Is God’s Spirit separate from or in intimate relationship with the physical forms of creation? What does it mean to say spirit and element are inseparably connected?
   • Are other concerns or paradoxes coming up for you?
    

3. Look over your notes and the questions above. Ask God to help you listen deeply for the question that is most important to your spiritual life and discipleship.

4. Sit quietly and let go of the attempt to hold onto or answer all the questions you now have. Be aware of God’s presence within the questions themselves.

5. Invite the deepest question you have about the sacredness of creation to come to your awareness. Breathe in and out with the question, saying it over and over several times in rhythm with your breathing.

6. Listen again for several minutes to insights that may come about how you can continue to discern a deeper understanding of this issue or question. Offer a prayer of commitment to continue listening to this question and to seek wisdom through many sources.

7. Close by offering a prayer of gratitude for the life-giving beauty of the earth and a prayer of healing for its shuddering distress as it is impacted by human greed and conflict.

—Carolyn Brock, Spirituality and Wholeness Ministries Specialist