The earth is God’s vineyard and we are His tenants. Service and care for the earth is the rent we pay for our stay and usufruct. As stewards of this beautiful place we are to treat it with respect and reverence, preserve and even enhance its beauty and bounty. But we have thrashed, destroyed and wasted the whole place.
We have shorn the mountains of their forest covers. We have gutted the earth of her minerals. We have poisoned the waters with out pollutants. Daily, whole species are disappearing, either poisoned by our wastes or hunted down to extinction or simply dying because of the loss of their habitats.
Still we remain unmindful of our profligate wastes. We keep on producing and acquiring more than what we need out of greed. We would deny others and condemn them to live in want and misery out of selfishness. And when our lifestyles are threatened in any way whatsoever, we are all so willing to do violence to others. It is as if we have a collective desire for self-destruction that we would destroy the very vineyard and garden that sustains us.
We will not be able to destroy the earth. We will merely destroy ourselves by disregarding her, by disrespecting her, by not treating her with reverence. We need to change our ways and our hearts and start taking real good care of the earth before “the owner of the vineyard comes and destroys the tenants and gives the vineyard to others.”