Our Borrowed Life

A song by Isaac Watts (1674-1748) includes this line, addressed to God: “All that borrows life from you is ever in your care.” I’ve never thought of us as borrowing life from God. However, if it is true that “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), in a sense we do borrow life from God. That applies not just to humans, but to all the created world.

What are the implications of borrowing life from God? First, as Watts notes, anything that carries a piece of God’s life is known by God and is in God’s care. As Psalm 147 observes, “He counts the stars and calls them all by name.” Jesus himself said, “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered; therefore, you shall not be afraid….” (Lk 12:7).

If everything that exists borrows life from God, then everything is holy and deserves to be honored and nurtured. Everything is in God’s care, but it should be in our care as well. This attitude fosters the health and well-being of all creatures and of earth itself.

The habitats that make up our planet are by design connected and rely on each other. As humans slash and burn forests, alter the temperature of the oceans, farm grasslands, and contribute to the melting of polar ice caps, these connections are broken and can no longer sustain life. Yet we still have time to make other choices and take the earth into our care. As Sir David Attenborough observes in his film A Life on Our Planet, “I may not be here to see it, but if we make the right decisions at this critical moment, we can safeguard our planet’s ecosystems, its extraordinary biodiversity and all its inhabitants. What happens next is up to every one of us.”

One day we will be called to return the life we have borrowed from God. We are more likely to have a peaceful death if we have used that life to increase God’s harvest of love and compassion.