Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci
Friends
I am sure that, like me, you have been looking with horror at the news from Texas and the 100 plus deaths caused by flash flooding. The BBC tells us that “The influence of climate change cannot be ignored as another factor in extreme weather events like this. Whilst it is difficult to directly attribute the influence of the warming planet to one particularly weather event, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, where some of the air originated from, continue to be warmer than normal. Warmer waters mean more evaporation and so more available moisture in the atmosphere to feed a storm.”
As various of our churches move towards gaining eco-church awards, either bronze or silver, we need to take seriously not just the response of our church leadership, but the response of each and every one of us. We are not changing tack at every latest initiative, but moving to an imperative which we need to take seriously, both for the future and because we believe that God created and loves the world. Indeed, he “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
We need to see the response in both ourselves and our churches as being a theological change that is part of our honouring God’s creation. If not, we are like the spoilt child who having accidentally damaged the edge of a gift, throws it on the ground and stamps on it in a tantrum of frustration, leaving the thing that could have been repaired utterly destroyed.
How we do that is up to us; but do something we must. It may be reducing food waste, using more public transport, refusing single use plastic, or replacing a worn out, needed item with the very best quality we can afford and then keeping it as carefully as possible so that it lasts. What matters is that we do not in our time ignore the prophets as we did of old. Eco-scientists and the people who tell us the weather may not look like we imagine prophets to look, they may not even know that they are doing God’s will, but we need to hear them and then as with God’s people across the years, we need to respond to the voice of God.
God bless,
Vicci