Everywhere we go, we see and hear of impending ecological crisis. Global climate change, holes in the ozone layer, extinction of species, hurricanes, deforestation, starvation caused by drought and pollution all compete for our attention. What do we make of these situations? Are our lives impacting, even causing these global issues? Do we even stop to ponder our individual role in the global scheme of things? Would we think any differently if we could travel through time into the future?
When the shift began for me, I was in the process of getting through my hitch in the Navy. I had my whole life ahead of me. My concerns were with figuring out who to live life with, what I was going to do for a living, what type of education I would need, and where I would live. My definition of “the future” encompassed just under five years.
But an amazing thing happened to me on my way to the future.
My wife and I created another human being. Brooke, the first of our two daughters, arrived on the scene announcing that a change in our outlook was in store. In an instant, time was redefined. The future suddenly extended beyond me and my immediate needs. Three years later, her sister, Maryn, joined the refrain and these two new lives began what became a chorus of profound change in me. Suddenly, I found the ability to see into the future; to see my daughters at my age. I noticed that along with my new expansive power, a new realization of weakness grabbed at my heel. “What sort of world am I leaving for their inheritance?”
My worries about one dollar gas prices vaporized and were replaced by images of a smog-choked, barren landscape where most elements of life—air, water, land—were irrevocably destroyed. The future felt suddenly close. It mattered. Where the world seemed headed was not a place I wanted my girls to be. When you wrap your arms around an infant, maybe you can see this way too. What lies ahead for him or her?
As I sit here today, nearly half a century has migrated from the future into the past for me. And once again, I notice that the passing of time only expands my vision of the future. Grandchildren are coming, and terrifyingly, great-grandchildren are imaginable. Now, instead of only seeing 20 or 25 years ahead, I am wondering about a half-century.
This is quite a disconcerting paradox; the older I get, the further into the future I can see.
And the future takes on new meaning. I find myself less concerned about my life today, and more anxious about tomorrow for those I love. Today’s headlines become more ominous not because I will be affected, but because they will be. A new reality has gripped me and, perhaps, you as well: our daily stewardship of this planet is our down payment for our children’s children’s children. As it says is Proverbs 13:22, “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children.”
How about you? What are you planning on leaving the next generation? Property, money or other material things that will corrode, break down, or be stolen by thieves? Or, could you make lifestyle sacrifices today that will leave the gift of clean water, healthy air, and the god-intentioned plethora of plants and animals that make Creation very, very good? What do you say? It’s up to you.
Time Travel is excerpted from Gardening Eden: How Creation Care Will Change Your Faith, Your Life, and Our World. Published by WaterBrook/Random House, 2009.
Michael Abbaté is the author of Gardening Eden: How Creation Care Will Change Your Faith, Your Life and Our World. Currently serving as the Urban Design & Planning Director for Gresham, Oregon, Abbaté is a nationally recognized expert in green development strategies, and is a co-founder of GreenWorks, an award-winning landscape architecture design firm. He speaks to churches and other communities of faith about our responsibility to be stewards of creation, as well as to community leaders, universities and design professionals and about practical ways to minimize the impact of development while restoring natural systems and processes. Contact him at: ma@michaelabbate.com.
