It’s sobering that we need a designated day to remind us to love and care for the planet. Celebrating the earth should be part of our natural daily rhythm and spiritual awareness. Yet, due to mounting environmental crises, Earth Day has become not just a celebration but a deep spiritual call to conscience and action.
Earth is in peril. Pollution is rampant, ecosystems are collapsing and climate change is accelerating in ways that affect every living being—plants, animals, birds and humans alike. The air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate that sustains us are all under threat and facing irreversible change.
April 22 is Earth Day, an international day of action and reflection. It shows that everyone, regardless of race, gender, income, sexuality, ability or geography, needs to live in a healthy, green and sustainable environment. If the Earth perishes, we all perish.
Our Power, Our Planet
This year’s Earth Day theme is “Our Power, Our Planet,” emphasizing the urgent need to transition toward renewable energy sources. It is a prophetic call to individuals, communities, churches, schools, corporations and governments to work together to triple global renewable energy generation by 2030.
We must live with clean energy sources such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and tidal power to reduce emissions and achieve a more just and sustainable future.
Earth Day has taken on personal significance for me. Through my involvement with the World Council of Churches and my academic work on climate justice, I have come to see the climate crisis as not only an environmental issue, but a spiritual and theological one. My forthcoming book, “Earthbound,” will address these intersections, demonstrating how faith and justice must unite to fight ecological devastation.
As a theologian, I believe it is vital to reimagine God at the intersection of climate and justice. Our relationship with God cannot be separated from our relationship with creation. How we view the Earth reflects how we understand God.
Reimagining God
Traditional metaphors for God depict God in static, hierarchical and masculine terms that don’t help us nurture a theology that values the Earth or all forms of life. They often enable theologies of control and domination, the very ideologies that have justified the exploitation of the planet.
Thus, we need a new theological imagination to propel us toward climate justice. If we begin to speak of God as a verb who creates, loves, heals, enlivens, beautifies, empowers, forgives and sustains, it will help us see God who moves, relates, sustains, and gives life.
This helps us see ourselves not as passive observers of God’s work, but as active participants in divine creativity and justice. We are called to co-create a world where all can flourish—humans, animals, oceans, forests and skies.
Reimagining God in this dynamic way transforms our spiritual lives and galvanizes our ecological commitments. It affirms that as we labor for justice, for the Earth, and for all who live upon it, God also labors with us.
On this Earth Day and every day, may we be moved not just to reflect but to act. Let us honor creation with our prayers, policies, choices, daily practices and collective will. Let us walk gently and lovingly upon this Earth, not as owners and commodifiers but as sacred caretakers.
Earth Day is not just about the Earth but about all of us and the sacred shared future we choose to create.
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