Sunday, April 22, 2018

Save the Earth! Muley's Earth Day Message at First Congo


Delivered to the congregation of First Congo on 4/22/2018:

So, today is the day:  EARTH DAY!  It’s a day that we celebrate the earth!  Yeah, “Happy Earth day to you, Happy Earth day to you, Happy EARTH DAY dear Ear-erth!  Happy Earth day to you!”  And what a planet to celebrate!  It gives us air to breathe by having all the big, beautiful trees make oxygen, and food to eat from the clean soil, and water to drink!  Earth takes good care of us.  None of the other planets do that!  You can’t get that on Mercury, or on Venus, or on Jupiter, or on Mars, or on Pluto, or on Saturn, or on Neptune, or on the other planet which name I won’t say in church!  But, the planet Earth has everything on it for all of us and it takes good care of us.

And, what do we do when someone – or, I guess in this case, something takes care of us?  We say “Thank you!”  But, how do we say “thank you” to the planet Earth?  Like this:  “Thank you, Earth!”  Just like the Earth takes care of us, we have to take care of it.  You might say, “But, I’m only one person!  What can I do to take care of the earth?”

Well, plenty.  In the book of Genesis, we’re told to “till the earth and keep it.”  That means that we can work the land, but keep it safe also.  All we have to do is pay attention to the things we use every day.  Can the things we use be reused or recycled?




I brought some items and stuck them to the stage-podium-box thing here.  And you’ll see some numbers next to them.  Now, what number is next to the plastic straw?  7.5?  Right now, there is an estimated 7.5 MILLION straws on the edge of the oceans of the United States, and around the world the land that touches the water is covered by possibly 8.3 billion plastic straws.

Do you see that plastic bag?  What number is next to it?  100?  Every year there are 100 BILLION plastic bags used in the US, and 500 BILLION used around the world.  That’s one plastic bag for every man, woman and child every 4 days.  The city of Memphis spends $5.6 million dollars every year to bury plastic bags in landfills.  Guess what:  It takes between 10 years to 1000 years for a plastic bag to decompose!

See the plastic bottle?  What number is next to it?  1?  Seeing that number, how many plastic bottles do you think are used every minute? 1 million bottles are used per minute, and each bottle takes more than 450 years to decompose!  Less than 14 percent of plastic gets recycled per year, and that means that there’s a lot of garbage out in our planet that will never go away – unless we pay attention to the things we use!

And, now, what’s that number next to the earth that I drew?  1.  Hold up one finger.  There’s only one earth like our earth, just like there’s only one of each of you.  You are special because nobody else is like you in the world, and we only have our one world which makes it special so we HAVE to take care of it!



So, I just put down a bunch of numbers, and what does it all equal?  I have NO clue!  I stink at math.  But, I do know that your adults can help you figure it out, and that there are ways we can save our planet.  There are now stainless steel straws that can be reused, and we reuse plastic bags all the time at our house.  Oh, and the plastic bottles?  Forget about it.  I have washable and reusable containers at home. 

I once asked, “What can I do to take care of the earth?  I’m only one person!”  It only takes one person to be a leader.  I get my friends and we pick up garbage from the neighborhood, or at the park, and while it may not have been a ton of garbage at one time, it was enough to make a difference.  And you and your friends can do that, too.  We only have one beautiful earth, and we have to take care of it and keep it just as God gave it to us.  And you know why God gave us such a beautiful planet?  Because God loves you, and your pal Muley loves you, and I’ll see you real soon.

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The following photos were borrowed from internet searches with no recollection where they were found; but, we'll be happy to list proper credits when given them!

What God gave us and what we did to it...


What God gave us and what we did to it...




What God gave us and what we did to it...