Creation eagerly awaits our resurrection

Next Saturday, April 22, is Earth Day, the world’s third most widely observed secular holiday (after New Year’s and International Workers’ Days).

Previously, I’ve written Earth Day-themed articles encouraging Christians to commemorate humanity’s divine inaugural vocation of properly caring for God’s creation. But today, keeping an Earth Day mindset in the background, let’s explore the Apostle Paul’s intriguing portrayal of creation anxiously anticipating human resurrection in order to be released from “imposed slavery.”

Paul’s metaphor for this exciting concept is that of a woman painfully suffering in labor while joyously expecting the arrival of a child.

The author of Hebrews probably comes closest to portraying present-day Christian yearning for eternity. The Hebrews writer describes God’s faithful people as wandering foreigners on Earth, longing for a better homeland, someplace with a “heavenly” ambience” (Hebrews 11:13-16). We can all sympathize with this somber outlook. The difficulties of Christian life wear us down and make us wistfully long (like homesickness) for someplace better than what our present lives offer.

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If only there could be a better place, without unhappiness, problems, sickness and death. We wish for a future where goodness, justice and righteousness

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