EARTH WE ARE, AND TO EARTH WE WILL RETURN.
By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for earth you are and to earth you will return. Genesis 3: 19.
I only spoke a few words at my wife’s funeral. Just when she was lowered into the grave in the Tweed cemetery in October 2,020, I said: “Earth we are and to earth we will return”. She was 25 in 1953 when we married.
I fervently believe in “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting (on earth)”. I also believe that creation is God’s Primary Word. In the Bible, God’s written Word, there are examples galore referring to this.
Take Psalm 119:105: Your word is a lamp for our feet and a. light for our path. Or take 1 Peter 1: 2: But the word of the Lord endures forever. Or take John 1: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and with God. All these texts refer to God’s Created WORD.
Yes, these quotations all point to “The word of the Lord”. Psalm 33: 9 plainly says: “God spoke and it came to be”. None of them refer to the Scriptures, even though they all are duly recorded there.
However, when in church the Bible is read, the reading often is concluded with, “This is the word of the Lord”, which is only partially true. It actually is one of God’s words, and not even the most significant. Take this text: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1: 20)
That’s why the Belgic Confession asks the “Word” question, and answers it too.
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Without excuse.
The ‘Secular world’ too recognizes that ‘Earth we are’. Here is a recent example.
Two studies – one a UNESCO assessment, People and Nature in UNESCO Sites: Global and Local Contributions, released for Earth Day, and, two, a peer-reviewed study released in early April in Frontiers in Science – both warn that nature is not a resource to exploit or a luxury to preserve but the system on which everything else depends – our economy, our culture, ourselves.
The world, God’s beloved world – read John 3: 16 – is the Word that is forever. Genesis 9 relates how God made a covenant with the earth and all it contains. Remarkable. Unbelievable. A covenant makes the two partners ‘equal’. God treats the world and all it contains, the trees and animals, her microbes and secrets, as an equal, an entity with eternal life: just as God. That’s what Covenant really means: a treaty between equals. Simply amazing! Dr. Sabine Dramm, summarizing Bonhoeffer’s theology, writes: “Specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one…” Making a covenant with the world entails that, however unbelievable. God sees the world and all it contains, as representing him as an equal. In that light we must also understand Jesus’ words.
Example.
Jesus gave us “The Lord’s Prayer”. The first petition in it is: “Hallowed be Your Name”. Let’s first translate that ancient, outdated word, “Hallowed”. It’s a medieval word for “HOLY”. That ‘holiness’ has nothing whatever to do with God’s name. Karen Armstrong in her book, Sacred Nature, lists 50 names for God, culled from the Bible. God cannot be named. He is beyond name. What Jesus really aimed at, was the holiness of everything created, human, animal, plant, air, soil, seas. On each created item God’s name is written, and thus holy.
That’s why the Bible, the written Word, will disappear. The eternal Word are the words spoken when the universe was created, ‘in the beginning’. There was a start and the Word was God. Before anything else, THE Word existed, and all explanations cease. In the New Creation we will have eternity to search for the reasons why we live and exist and have our being. I think the Bible calls this: “Eternal Rest”. We will enter that “Requiescat in Pace”, that “Resting in Peace” at that time. Just as there is Peace on Earth, we too will be ‘at peace’, the peace that is beyond understanding. I think that there we will experience the new, explore the unknown, and venture into terra incognita. Now is the time to think the unthinkable, because soon the times of the new things will be here.
Think about this on Earth Day 2026.