In Genesis 1:26, God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the animals wild and tame, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

Notice that the writer has God — in the Hebrew, plural. The name of God in this version is Elohim. The idea of human folks was that they were male and female, created at the same time, co-equal and not separately superior or inferior as the other creation writers infer. Let's not get out of source with the other writers as there is considerable difference when it comes to "who's the boss?"

That settled, the most important information given is that these first ancestors were to be God's representatives or stewards. I'll give you my interpretation. They were to give God a good return on His investment and take care of His world and give it back better than we received it.

What was that world like? What was it like for Adam and Eve? All the best food imaginable with no struggle to maintain a farm or garden, no fear of the dark, no worry about some apex predator stalking them. Just pure joy of a sunrise, sunset, soft rain and absolute freedom to roam and explore ... forever!

This is not a research paper in Anthropology, but let's say that we have come a long, long way from Eden to our century. We have the potential to be well-educated, technologically-sophisticated and reasonably social. We are also very capable of destroying one another at the touch of a button, unless the weather does it first. We now exist in a world that seems to have dwindling resources, overpopulation and constant fear of terrorism — local and foreign — and unbelievable weather that we cannot predict or control. It's too easy to wag our fingers and say that if people would not live in places like the seashore, mountains, cheap housing or anywhere there are hurricanes, floods, tornados, you name it, they'd be safer.

Back to Genesis. In all this confusion, we have been commanded to take care of what we have made, should have expected and ignored all the signs of stewards gone bad. God's original world, that He called very, very good, has certainly been very, very poorly managed. Some would say, "Not fixable."

Not so fast! 

We have all the ability and what we lack is the willingness to stop the destruction and begin to focus our attention on what we can clean up, restore and use to protect this fragile planet and ourselves. That's what stewards do.

We don't need to pray that God will do for us what we've been created to do but forgot somewhere along the way. We must read the directions that God has given us and follow His plan to the letter.

With faith and courage, we can make the land prosper. God will take care of the rest.

Thanks, God!