A Broken World

 I have fourteen globes in my classroom.

As of Tuesday, one of them is broken—

Cracked right down the middle of the Pacific Ocean—

A gaping hole in the planet—

The world is broken.

 

A 2^nd grader broke it.  

She said her hands were slippery and that the globe just fell out.

Her hands weren’t slippery.

The globe didn’t just fall out.

In all actuality,

She wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing.

She was being careless.

In an instant, the world cracked.

A huge chunk fell to the floor.

All the other students stopped in their tracks.

“Ooooooh,” they said, looking at me.

I wasn’t happy.

I picked up the broken world.

I held it in my hands.

“And this is what happens when you’re not careful with the globes.”

 

We all have our excuses for why we keep breaking the world.

Most of the time,

It’s simply because we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing.

Instead, we’re paying attention to convenience.

We are careless.

We don’t necessarily see the cracks we’re making.

We don’t always see huge chunks falling to the floor.

[Although the Artic is melting, and icebergs are crumbling,

So that should be a sign.]

We don’t always stop in our tracks,

“Oooooooh,” and look to the God who created this world.

But God is there, picking up the pieces,

Holds them in God’s hands,

And saying, “This is what happens when you’re not careful with the world.”

 

Oh God: You have tasked us to be good stewards of this earth. You have given us the beauty of all Creation and asked us to take care of it. Instead, we damage it more every day. Help us to do better. Help us to stop breaking the world. Amen. And Amen.