Envisioning a sacred relationship with creation, the first word that comes to mind is “balance.” I’ve sometimes struggled with why God created animals and humans to need to kill other living things (whether plants or other animals) to survive. Similarly, human technology of life-saving medical care, transportation, and internet have allowed humans to learn from and serve other humans across the world—yet creating/sustaining them has involved environmental destruction. How do we find the right balance?
The experience that came to mind for me in reflecting on this was rather unexpected. While in Mexico, I was swimming in the rather choppy ocean. I figured I’d be fine as long as I didn’t cross the ‘safety rope’ parallel to the shore, but as I neared it, waves dragged me under the rope and further out to sea. The current was flowing against me, and hard as I tried, I couldn’t move any closer to shore. I tried to swim parallel to escape the current, but as the waves got stronger, they began crashing over my head faster than I could take in air in between.
As I struggled to keep my head above water and felt my energy draining, I realized that I very likely wasn’t going to make it. I started to sort of feel that calmness that near-drowning victims sometimes describe, and I wasn’t so much afraid, but I felt a crushing guilt as I imagined how devastated my family would be to learn that I had died so suddenly and far from home. That thought that made me start to struggle harder, so that if this was the end I would at least fight as hard as I could. I began to swim as hard as I could, but more importantly, I began to pray, begging Jesus to help me.
Moments later, in what truly felt like a miracle, I saw another rope, running perpendicular from something out in the ocean to the shore. The thought came to me that if I could reach that rope, I had a chance at surviving. Fueled by adrenaline and prayer, I somehow made it to the rope. Grabbing hold did not enable me to keep my head above water, but it did help me—even fighting against the current and the slippery algae—to eventually haul myself to shore.
I look back on this experience with some residual trauma, but also a greater humility and appreciation for the awesome power of nature that God created and how small we humans are in comparison. The ocean that day didn’t care where the humans had placed the ‘safety’ rope. Humans have used elements of nature to create and achieve amazing things, but we believe we can control or disregard it at our peril. Perhaps nature is one way God is teaching us to be humble and rely on Him.
What I most feel when I look back on this near-death experience is a profound gratitude to Jesus for what I really believe was divine intervention, and a recognition that truly, without Him I can do nothing. I also recall the story of Jesus calming the stormy sea while his panicked disciples on the boat pleaded for Him to save them. Perhaps this then is the answer to the question of how do we ‘balance’ between using creation creatively for the greater good and not falling into misusing creation in a way that harms and denigrates both creation and Creator: We must let God be the Mediator, the Doorway, the Guide for how we make decisions about how to engage with creation—the Reconciler.