It is the year of the Tiger and I live with a young man who is quite interested in Tigers and more importantly “Saving the Tiger.”
In Genesis 1:28 Adam and Eve were told to subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing, where dominion means tending rather than dominating. Then again in Romans 8:22, Paul tells us that the earth is groaning in pain. It is up to us to pass the baton onto our kids and their kids to care for our world and every living thing in it.
There is a lot we can do to contribute to saving the environment, and my kids certainly learn by example (and lots of it). Recycling, composting, conserving water and electricity, donating things we don’t need rather than throwing them out. We do it, not because it is fashionable but because we are called to do it.
We need to do a bit more than just be an example to impart environmental stewardship on to our kids and in the spirit of Tigers:
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- Tell them about conservation.
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- Investigate their own environment.
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- Goals are important, “Save the Planet” is just too vast. Keep them realistic!!!
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- Explore their world and discover what they can do to help, beach clean-up for example.
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- Restore, give them a chance to complete a project.
In reality there is not a lot a child or any of us can actually do to save a species. A lot of projects that my kids want to support require funding, and in the spirit of Stewardship I don’t want everything to be about money. They are already saving money for their Lesotho Project and they participated in the OneVerse Project last year… but we are always saying: “Action speaks louder than words.” So when one of my Hoods asked why we have buttons on our blog for all sorts of things, but none for Saving Tigers I knew the time had come…
And from now on we will have a “Save the Tiger Button” on our blog. As our kids learn about stewardship one click at a time.
In which case you should also have a free rice button 🙂
http://www.freerice.com/
Hi A, In which case you are probably right!!! I will tell them all about it!!! Have a good day!
How surprising to find you. We homeschooled our kids (the youngest is now 20 and in college). And, yes, we don’t want it all to be about money. But if your kids want to save the tiger, as I want to, one of the things that will save the tiger is publicity. Letters to the Editor. Blog posts. Talking with family, friends, relatives, etc. So lets’s get that key board clicking! here’s an example from my blog: http://dreamantilles.blogspot.com/2010/02/saving-tiger-first-steps.html
Kids can do this effectively and send it to everyone they know. It’s amazing how that leads to big changes. Thanks for all you do.
Hi D, Thanks for stopping by and all the great tiger info on your site!!!