Love - TerraAgape
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by Peter Illyn
April is one of my favorite months. So much happens in the fourth month. This season of the year that reminds me about resurrection, rebirth and the miracle of life. We have the end of Lent and the celebration of the Resurrection. We have Earth Day and the remembering that we should all cherish the one place in the universe that supports life. And we see the return of life with trees budding, flowers blooming and birds returning. Even the name of the month, April, is rooted in the Latin for ‘opening’ - reflecting the renewal of spring. The air is filled with the scent of flowers and the trill of songbirds (and pollen, my allergy-suffering friends).
In celebration of April, I made a new word, TerraAgape. It comes from two words: Terra and Agape. Terra is Latin for the “earth” and Agape, a Greek term for a divine, spiritual love. Together they mean “spiritual love for the earth.”
So much of the work of Restoring Eden is simply to create a theologically and culturally safe space for Christians to love of nature. But do we really need a new phrase? Well, sadly, I think we do.
In the early days when I would promote caring for creation, a typical rejoinder was, “well, we’re not supposed to worship the Earth.” I would respond that “loving what God loves is not earth-worship. It is not a slippery-slope to paganism. Loving what God called good is simply finding the heart of stewardship. The heart that loves is also the heart that sacrifices, the heart that serves, the heart that searches for the lost sheep, the heart that lays down one’s life.”
The Bible tells us that while we are made in the image of God we are made of the substance of the earth. I believe it is that part of humanity made in the image of God that knows deep in their souls that the earth is good. Look, I’m not a romantic (just ask my wife!) I know it is not a perfect world. It is a world with disease, famine, drought, hurricane, raging fires and tornado’s. But it is still a good earth. It is a miracle of life. It is a world of wonder. It is a world worthy of loving.