We’re all part of Earth’s ecosystem: our actions matter

Inspired by Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday, Anna reflects on the impact we each have on the environment.

A couple of years ago, I stood on the precipice of a craggy rockpool, peering down into its glassy depths. Above the flurries of fish, rippling seaweed and barnacle-speckled floor, I saw myself reflected in the water’s surface – a portrait of my face painted against a canvas of nature.

I found myself wondering how God felt sculpting the tiny bodies of these fish. Slotting each scale into place with delicate precision, splashing them with iridescence. There’s an endless intensity to nature. It spirals off into the furthest, most undiscoverable corners of space and squeezes down into each unseeable microorganism. All of it crafted by his careful hands, including you and me!

As I marvelled at this artistry, I grew to understand something new of myself. Gazing down, I saw myself so small against the backdrop of nature and yet so very important, so loved. I understood then that I am a moving, breathing piece of the Earth as much as the little crab eyeing me with suspicion from the other side of the rockpool. We’re all as much a part of Earth’s ecosystem as these things, big and small.

I find a great deal of pride in the fact that the same hands that painted the sky and carved stone created me. When I think about this, I feel closer to nature than ever.

Later, I hopped over algae-blanketed rock to return to the beach. There, two little girls were lobbing fistfuls of wet sand at each other and a boy sat patting a sandcastle in quiet concentration. Walking along the shore, the sand was inscribed with drawings, names, footprints, pawprints and talons. And now, my own shoes were leaving their marks on the beach.

We all leave our impressions on the Earth, whether that’s by the flowers we grow, the plastic we discard or the fields we plough. We score our own marks in the sand; we press our bodies to the Earth as evidence of our presence.

Time moves on, and our marks are washed back into the embrace of the sea, but the impermanence of our actions does not make what we do pointless. Even as time washes away our footprints, God witnesses our presence and remembers us.

Genesis 2:15 tells us that God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to work it and care for it. The Lord has asked us to look after his creation. So, no matter how small we may feel, how futile it may seem to live sustainably in a world choked by pollution, he wants us to know that our actions still matter.

The impressions we leave on the Earth may be impermanent, but those left on his heart are not.