Dear Friends,
It is good to be getting back in touch with everyone again. We hope these last weeks have been positive ones for you. Ours weren’t really restful but a change in routine with fewer deadlines to meet & sometimes there was a bit more choice about how to spend the day!
So, back to Saturday Reflection: we have chosen Care of Creation as our theme – tomorrow is ‘Care of Creation’ Day, and the beginning of ‘Season for Creation’. Many occurrences over the summer in different parts of the world have underlined the urgency of issues related to climate change.
Our blessing is ‘Repose Blessing’ from the New Dawn CD. Let us be mindful of all who work tirelessly to stem or, at least, slow down climate change.
With our love & prayer
Earth, Teach Me
Earth teach me quiet – as the grasses are still with new light.
Earth teach me suffering – as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility – as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring – as mothers nurture their young.
Earth teach me courage – as the tree that stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation – as the ant that crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom – as the eagle that soars in the sky.
Earth teach me acceptance – as the leaves that die each fall.
Earth teach me renewal – as the seed that rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself – as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness – as dry fields weep with rain.
Care of Creation
Grace Ruiter
Our responsibility to care for God’s creation is sort of like the ultimate babysitting gig. A babysitter temporarily acts as a child’s primary caregiver, attending to the child’s needs and keeping the child safe. The child does not belong to the babysitter, but the responsibility for that child’s care does for a period of time. Similarly, the earth is not ours, but we have been entrusted with caring for it, protecting what God has made so that it can be enjoyed for generations to come.
Some Christians think we only need to worry about the world’s spiritual health—that so long as we have salvation in Christ, what happens to God’s creation as we await Christ’s return is unimportant. But the Bible indicates that Christ is about redeeming the whole earth, not just our souls.
And doing nothing to help care for the earth also goes against some babysitting basics. When a child tries to play with matches or run into the middle of traffic, a good babysitter doesn’t sit back and wait for the parents to come back and intervene. Rather, the babysitter puts the matches safely out of reach. The caretaker guides the child away from the speeding cars of rush hour. She takes immediate action to keep the child, placed in her care, safe.
We as Christians cannot sit back and do nothing while God’s creation is being harmed on our watch. Creation is for God’s glory, and humans have been given the special responsibility to care for God’s creation. The destruction of creation not only imperils life, including human life on this planet; it is also a sin against God.
Climate change and other environmental threats devastate and wreak havoc on the world God has made.
Cradled by Creation
Mary Kent
Silver sun-flecked river ripples
Sing for me their soothing song.
The wind’s breath gently smoothes my cheek
And tangles with my hair.
Cloudy sun-filled sky, alive with flocking birds and song,
Rhythmic wing-whirr of solitary swan enchants me.
Reed beds softly sigh
Their lonely lullaby with harmonising rustle
Honey-hued, the fields stretch ploughed lines
Towards the sky and winter.
Salty tang of sea and marsh mingle with my breath.
I occupy my place, my space
An interweaving part of God’s abundant, glorious prodigality.
God the creator has been compared to a potter who, after painstakingly crafting a series of beautiful pots, ‘has not exhausted either his art or his talent’. The creation of the world was not a one time burst of energy that left God exhausted, rather it was a pouring out of something deep within God – a desire to create, to bring about beauty and order and all that is good. God created because God is creative and God’s creativity does not run dry. This creative heart has left its fingerprints throughout the creation: in the wild evolution of nature, in the instinctive desire of our earliest ancestors to make art on the walls of their caves, in the stories that we tell to our children. The world is filled with creativity because it was created by a creative God whose art and talent are inexhaustible. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth—and that was only the beginning!
A breath can be a powerful thing. It can calm a troubled crowd, summon a sleeping parent, convey the deepest grief, give a world-changing order, restore a loved one to life. A breath can be a powerful thing. In the Bible the breath of God is rightly spoken of with the utmost respect. It is the breath of God which creates the starry host (Ps 33:6), gives life to Adam (Gen 2:7), brings forth ice (Job 37:10) and fire (Job 41:21), and fills the disciples with the Holy Spirit (Jn 20:22). The breath of God is a powerful, creative force. God didn’t need tools to create the universe, God simply spoke—or perhaps, as C.S. Lewis so memorably described in The Magician’s Nephew, sang the world into being. By the breath of God’s mouth, creation began.
Praise God for humble moss, without whom we,
Who live and breathe and leap and laugh and praise,
Could no more do such things.
Praise God for days
Long past when mosses spread from sea to sea
A continental carpet breathing fresh
New life into the oxygen starved air.
Praise God for lungs which found that they could bear
To breathe this atmosphere.
Praise God for flesh
Which crept and crawled and leapt and breathed and moved
Among the lichens, liverworts and ferns.
Praise God for life’s tenacity across
The ages as it gradually improved,
Evolved, developed hopes, dreams and concerns.
For all of this, praise God for humble moss.
Rich Clarkson, 2017