Well, first of all, let me say that it is a very real pleasure to be at Brunsfield tonight, especially tonight, because this is the first time that I have spoken to a live audience for eight months.
The last time I was speaking was on the second Sunday of March. My wife and I got COVID the following week, but I hope the two things were not connected.
But anyway, it's a real pleasure to be here tonight, and I applaud your ingenuity in opening the church.
I have felt sometimes a little uneasy that the churches have been closed down, and sometimes I just wonder if we are sufficiently keen to get back to meeting like this.
But thank you for having me tonight, and as I say, it is a particular pleasure to be here.
Now, I was originally asked to speak to you on this subject. I think it was originally scheduled for the month of April or thereabouts, and then it was postponed a couple of times.
But I'm very happy to have the opportunity to speak to you tonight on the subject of creation care.
And just before we begin the subject, I'm going to read to you just a couple of verses from Paul's letter to the Romans, just to supplement what we've already heard.
This is a well-known verse in chapter 1, verse 19, which says,
What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them.
For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
And then in chapter 8, speaking again of creation, he says,
And just further down that chapter, in verse 26, in the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness, we do not know what we ought to pray for,
but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that cannot express.
And he who searches our hearts knows the minds of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes with the saints in accordance with God's will.
Now may the reading of these passages be a blessing to us this evening as we consider together the subject of creation care.
Let me say by way of introduction that today is All Saints Day and has been celebrated as All Saints Day by the church since about the 8th century.
I was trying to find a link between All Saints Day and creation care.
Been struggling a bit with that, but it did strike me when reflecting on it that many of the ancient saints
were much interested in the messages of creation and in what they would have called creation care.
So many of them were very committed to the animal and plant kingdom.
And I think it was Sir Francis of Assisi who was not very keen about killing insects.
And I occasionally try to follow that when we have a wasp in the front room by encouraging the creature to use the open window,
but it doesn't always work out.
However, what's maybe more relevant for tonight, strangely, is that it was on this day in 1959
that the M1 was opened for the first time to traffic.
And of course, the spread of motorways has certainly been a feature of my lifetime.
And it has a great deal to do with the environment.
And it's something that the environmental movement focuses on.
So instead of M1, which was opened on this day in 1959, you might want to think about HS2,
which I think is going to be built one of these days,
but which has significant implications for the environment of the land through which it passes.
Now, I have been challenged in preparing for tonight's subject.
First of all, because I've never been asked to speak on this before.
Plenty of talks I've given on creation and design and creation, but never on the topic of creation care.
And so I've had to think quite a lot about it.
Thank you for all the extra time that I had to reflect on it.
But it also strikes me that across my life and my association with evangelical churches,
it has not been a topic that has been in any way conspicuous.
In fact, I struggle to remember if I've ever heard anyone speaking about creation care
and the significance of the environment, except in a rather cursory and passing way.
So I think as we come to our subject tonight, there is an issue about how much attention over the years we have given to this.
And I'm not being critical about it.
I think there is something about creation care which is difficult for us.
Just the sheer size of the created world is such that it's very hard for us to reflect on any personal impact
that we might have in the very small piece of territory that we occupy.
Of course, it has become recently a very prominent political issue with the rise of the Green Parties
and the environmental movement thrusting itself now to our attention with environmental extinction movement.
And I think it's partly because we really are not quite sure how to handle this
and how as Christians to react to it.
Again, I'm not sure where I would find a definitive evangelical response to this matter.
But I do think as Christians who believe in God that we do sense that God is in control of the creation that he has made.
And maybe we have just been content to leave it there.
And that's not altogether a bad thing to do.
It is certainly an understandable reaction.
I've also not found a great deal of material on the subject.
I've come across a series of booklets in a series entitled Grove Ethics.
And these deal with various aspects of the environmental movement and what they would perceive as a crisis.
And there is one book I've come across called Bible Theology for Life Creation Care by Douglas and Jonathan Moo.
And this book gives a fairly complete treatment of modern evangelical thinking about environmentalism.
However, there have been some Christians that have involved themselves in this.
And one of them in particular is Sir John Houghton.
He passed away sadly in the 15th of April this year.
I think I'm right in saying he had a background amongst Christian brethren.
He certainly was brought up in an evangelical home.
He was professor of atmospheric physics at Oxford and was also the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.
A group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore.
You remember Al Gore?
He used to introduce himself by saying, I used to be the next president of the United States.
But it never quite happened for him.
And then, of course, very much in the news is the young lady Greta Thunberg.
The activist who has become an international personality about the urgency of environmental issues.
And one of the times I heard her speak, she said, don't believe me, believe the science.
And I must say that I thought there was something somewhat odd about a young 17-year-old
who is motivated by something she hears from her teacher at school and becomes a world expert on environmental issues.
I thought there was a degree of desperation about that.
And it leaves me wondering a little bit about the coherence of the current environmental movement.
No reflection on her.
Just the fact that she became the focus of a movement that feels often frustrated, I found rather interesting.
But there's an interesting phrase that we've become used to now.
It is the phrase, follow the science.
And this implies, of course, that science has the answers.
It has the answers on the origin of life.
It has the answers on the origin of the universe, apparently, and how life got to be as it is.
It apparently has clear answers about the future of our planet and climate change.
Although the follow the science school has been just a little dented over the science of COVID.
Because I think we are beginning to see that following the science about COVID is not exactly straightforward.
Because there are scientists who disagree about where we are and what's going to happen.
But it has become very much a matter now where scientists speak with great authority on the future of the planet
and what ought to be done about it.
Now, there's perhaps another level that we can come to in this.
And you may be surprised when I say to you to think for a moment or two about the Welsh village of Aberfan,
where there was an appalling catastrophe in 1966,
when around a coal mine on a hill behind the village,
a mudslide started that engulfed the school and claimed the lives of scores of innocent young children.
I remember my wife and I, we weren't long married at the time,
visiting Aberfan and being profoundly moved by what we saw there.
And it came back to me because I was reading recently John Humphrey's book, A Day Like Today,
and he records that reporting on the Aberfan disaster was one of the first tasks he had as a young journalist.
And it made me think about the impact on the environment that individuals can have
in a scale that you can understand,
because this was a scale of the environment which was being handled, I think, at the time by the National Coal Board.
And if I may just read to you a piece that John Humphreys wrote about this,
he says,
Never was anger more justified.
The National Coal Board who ran the mines had,
from a mixture of deceit and cowardice and fear of retribution,
tried to claim that the tragedy was an act of God.
It was not.
It was an act of negligence by man,
criminal negligence.
The politician responsible for the NCB, Lord Robbins,
a blustering, lying bully of a man,
had gone on television to say that the cause of the disaster
was the water from a natural spring,
which had been pouring into the centre of the tip
and produced the water bomb that finally exploded with such devastating results.
The spring, said Robbins,
was completely unknown,
and that was just one of his lies.
Not only was it known,
its presence was marked on local maps,
and older miners knew exactly where it was and what the danger was,
and they had been saying so for years.
They were ignored.
Mercifully, they had put their fears in writing,
and the letters written by the miners and ignored by the NCB
were eventually produced at the inquiry into the disaster
so that the truth could be revealed for all the world to see.
And when I read that,
and reflecting sadly on it,
I thought of the terrible parable that Aberfan remains.
You see, it is a parable, I suggest, about at least three things.
It is, first of all, a parable about a legitimate activity.
It is legitimate,
and as Christians we would believe this,
and our readings tonight bear this out,
that it is a legitimate activity
to make use of the resources of the earth,
and that's what the coal mining industry had done for several hundred years.
Now, I'm not saying that the conditions in which miners worked were legitimate,
but the activity was legitimate
to use the vast coal resources of the earth.
They remained vast still,
and may never be used if environmentalism continues in the way that it is going.
But the second thing about it is
the careless disposal of waste.
Now, when I was growing up as a child,
I used to wonder about the coal bings
that you could find around central Scotland.
There used to be a spectacular one
as you drove along as it was the A8 then,
and saw the kind of reddish shale heaps along the motorway.
I think some of them have gone,
but most of them are still there.
And there was no sense of the importance
of preserving the environment.
You just disposed of these things in the quickest possible way,
and not necessarily the safest possible way,
as was discovered at Aberfan.
And then there was the criminal negligence
of not acting on the basis of what was known.
It was known that there was a stream of water
running through the waste from the pit in Aberfan.
People wrote about it.
People asked for action, but nobody dealt with it.
And of course, it was a huge water bomb
just waiting to explode,
which it did on one terrifying day.
So that was, for me, a kind of a parable
about creation care.
It is legitimate to exploit the resources of the earth,
but we need to be careful in doing so.
We need to be careful in the way in which we dispose
of some of the waste that this produces,
because it can very easily scar the face of the earth,
and it can be exceedingly dangerous.
Now let me try to broaden that just a little bit,
and to say there are some clear current challenges
in the management of the created order
and in the environment.
And in one of these books that I mentioned to you,
I found that they had four particular matters
that exercise our generation.
The first is, and this is not one of the night like tonight
when you've driven in a rainstorm along the M8
that you would fully appreciate,
but the world has a severe problem
with the shortage of water.
The changing climate in parts of the world
leads to dry, barren land.
And this is a basic problem about the amount of water,
amount of water available for agriculture
and for human communities.
And of course, it also subsumes the other problem
of clean drinking water for the people of the earth,
something that we take absolutely for granted,
but which is a major problem.
And then secondly, there is the problem
of the population of the world.
The population of the world has increased dramatically.
In my lifetime, it has gone from something like
3 billion people to 7 billion people
in the course of my lifetime.
And so this is a huge challenge.
It's not that the planet cannot sustain that number,
but it has something to do with the way
in which we manage the environment
and the way in which the resources of the earth are shared.
And then thirdly, something that I think
most of us who are city dwellers are not much aware of
is that the loss of biodiversity,
the total number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians,
and fish on the planet has approximately halved in 40 years.
Plants are also in major decline.
And since 1600, about 650 known species have become extinct.
In 2016, it was estimated that 26% of mammals,
13% of birds, 42% of amphibians,
and 40% of gymosperms, plants which include the conifers,
are threatened with extinction.
And the reasons for this rapid decline
are the disappearance of suitable habitats
and the fact that now 25% of the earth's land surface
is now under agriculture.
So these are significant challenges.
And maybe it brings me back to my first point
that as Christians,
it is hard to focus on what can we do about it?
What can I do about it?
These problems are enormous.
And the obvious way to deal with them,
it would seem,
is to have some political and international initiatives
that can deal with them.
So maybe our first thought is
that that is something that we could pray for,
and then it is something that if we have the skills
and the background,
like someone like Sir John Houghton,
we might want to involve ourselves in it.
Just, I think I missed one last point.
Yeah, the one I missed was actually
perhaps the most important one.
There is also the question of climate change,
which is now assumed to be
an unassailable truth of our time,
and I'll come back to that in just a moment.
I thought I'd just put this picture on the screen tonight
just to remind us of that awful moment in Aberfan,
this is not an international tragedy.
This is a very local tragedy.
This is something that might easily have been avoided.
And you can see from that picture,
that terrifying picture,
the extent to which a heap of shale and waste
was washed down over a village
with devastating consequences.
Now maybe I could reduce these to three issues
that we could perhaps get our head around.
The first is the problem of pollution.
And I'm alarmed when I read of, for example,
the extent to which plastics have invaded the earth,
and not just the obvious ones,
what people throw away their Coke bottles and the like,
but also that plastics on a micro scale
have to be found in our oceans and living things,
in our food.
I read a rather scary piece about child milk for babies
having remnants of plastic in them.
And this is clearly a major problem.
It is a problem about how we deal with materials
that we require for our lifestyle.
Now I would have thought that the problem of pollution
is one of the problems that should be easier to solve.
Because it seems to me that a great deal of the problem of pollution
is that people just throw things away.
We have some beautiful countryside around the village of Eagles
somewhere I live,
but on the little single track roads that we drive on sometime,
you'll find heaps of material dumped into a field
at the wayside, everything from old baths to sofas.
And you wonder why people don't think it would be easier
to drive them to the local authority dump
than to release them in the countryside.
I'm sure money will have something to do with it.
But pollution is certainly a problem,
and it's one that I think is easy enough to get our mind around.
And so as Christians, I think we would want to be careful.
I know you are.
We'd want to be careful about the materials we use,
about the reuse of materials where we can,
and making sure that material that we're finished with
is disposed of appropriately and recycled.
I'm beginning to sound like a health and safety officer,
but it would seem to me that lurking behind that
there is a clear Christian duty.
The second is the destruction of the environment
that I've said something about and mentioned.
Now, this is harder to deal with,
but it is possible.
The destruction of the environment in many ways
is something that has to be managed by governmental authorities,
and it is hard.
But it is something, I think,
which human beings have a significant degree of control over.
And so if you're inclined to study in the area
and to work in it,
or to get involved in some of this kind of activity,
then that would be a holy Christian thing to do,
because it would be a way of expressing our respect
for the richness of the resources that the Lord has given us
and the need not to use these in a way
that destroys the beauty of the environment.
And then thirdly,
let me come rather controversially to the matter of climate change.
Now, as far as most people are concerned,
this is an issue that is settled.
And the very worst thing you could be,
and I'm in danger of falling into the trap tonight,
is to be a climate sceptic.
If you don't agree with the majority position,
then you're a sceptic.
But of course,
scepticism
is fundamental
to the practice of science.
The reason why we live in the scientific age that we do
is because theories that were put forward
were treated with a degree of scepticism
until they were tried and established.
And it would be fair to say
that science never arrives at an absolute position.
It always arrives at a position that is most likely,
but which might be overtaken by further evidence.
So when I hear people saying,
don't listen to me,
just follow the science,
the science is settled,
then one of my antennas says,
well, hang on a minute.
I did study science.
I worked as a scientist.
That's not how I understand science.
Science always leaves some questions open.
And then,
when I see people
wanting to shut down debate about something,
then I sense there's something wrong.
So,
you probably are aware
that any sceptics of climate change,
by that I mean scientific sceptics,
well-qualified people
who are sceptical of the present position,
are silenced.
Some have been removed from committees,
international committees,
because they have voiced a doubt.
I even saw one person
that wanted to make climate scepticism illegal,
that it was a criminal thing
to have doubts about climate change.
And this is a very odd thing.
And it generally indicates
a degree of uncertainty
about what is being proposed.
Mind you,
once you have convinced governments
to spend billions of pounds
dismantling the society
in the interests of climate change,
you wouldn't want to be the guy
that has to go to the prime minister
and say,
actually,
we might have got that bit of it wrong.
So,
there comes a pressure
to adopt a position,
and we've now reached a stage
where climate change
is the basis of catastrophism.
You know,
we're all going to suffocate
in about 20 years
if we're lucky.
And this creates an atmosphere
in which it is very hard to know
what you and I can do about it.
By the way,
I don't want to be labelled
a climate sceptic,
but there are one or two things about it
that I do wonder about.
Why was it,
for example,
that the earth
was warmer in the past
than it is in the present?
How did it get to be warmer
before the Industrial Revolution?
That's a very strange question
to which
there isn't a very good answer.
And then one day
when somebody said to me,
what is the most common greenhouse gas?
Expecting the answer,
CO2.
The correct answer is
H2O,
water.
Water is the most common greenhouse gas.
You'd have some job
getting rid of the water.
It is a combination of water
and carbon dioxide
that control the climate
of our planet.
And certainly,
we are putting carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere.
There is no question about that
at a remarkable scale.
But you see,
it's hard to know
whether that is the cause of warming
or the result of warming
because the oceans absorb
vast quantities of carbon dioxide.
As they warm up,
they release carbon dioxide.
So,
there is another mechanism
involving carbon dioxide.
And one of the questions
that does arise about this
is,
are we heating the planet up?
Or,
does the planet heat
and cool
according to the phases
of the sun
over history?
Now,
there is an argument
around that,
but you're not allowed
to make it.
I did read a book
about the great climate change disaster
by the late Christopher Booker,
who was a bit of a controversialist.
And he has written a book
in which he maintains
that the present catastrophic,
catastrophic picture
of the future
is misplaced.
And if you're interested,
it's worth reading his book.
However,
having said all of that
and managed to
not have anybody walk out on me,
what I would say is
that there is a case
for saying
that the level
at which we are producing
carbon dioxide
is alarming.
It may very well
be having a significant
effect on our climate
and it is wise
to take
precautionary action.
So,
I'm not arguing against
what is being suggested.
I think it is also sensible
for us to think about
alternatives
to the fossil fuels
that we use.
I noticed recently
the first hydrogen train
and there is a whole world
of energy and hydrogen
that could replace
petrol and diesel
and gas.
I used to teach chemistry
and one of the experiments
I loved to do
was fill a bottle
with hydrogen
and then put a taper into it
and listen to the bang
as it can,
behind the safety screen
of course,
as the hydrogen
combined with oxygen
to form water
with explosive force.
And of course,
you could run
the modern world
on hydrogen.
you could run it,
a large part of it
on electricity
and in so doing
you would improve
atmospheric quality
because you would
expel water vapour
rather than
carbon dioxide
and some methane.
So,
there are things
that could be done.
Now,
this is drifting away
from the reality
of a Sunday night
in Brunsfield
and what you and I
are likely to do
before supper
but these are the
kind of issues
of the scale
of the issues
and so I would say
what we need to do
is to try and find
a way in which
as individuals
we can respond
to some of these
challenges.
I keep wondering
if we need two cows
in our family
and we've actually
moved to three cows
and two families
well that's a modest
reduction
but it doesn't quite
solve the problem.
However,
I would urge us
as Christians
just to be careful
that we don't
assume
that the catastrophic
future
prophesied
by climate change
is beyond question.
Just to be a little
theological for a moment
let me just mention
two verses
that occurred to me
when I was thinking
about this.
When God destroyed
the world
with a flood
what he said was
I will never
again
destroy
the earth
with a flood.
Now I don't want
to read too much
into that
but there's a rainbow
in the sky
every other day
just to remind us
of that
and of course
if the climate change
view is correct
then one of the things
we're going to do
is flood
large parts of the earth.
The Lord said
I'm not going to do
that again.
And secondly
there's a verse
in 2 Peter 3
verse 12
which talks about
the future
in which it says
the elements
will melt
with fervent heat.
Now
as a chemist
I know
the elements
don't melt
unless
you are dealing
with a nuclear
reaction
and a nuclear
explosion.
So when
Peter says
the elements
will melt
with fervent heat
I don't want
to press the point
too much
but it would not
be unreasonable
to suggest
that maybe
he got a glimpse
of the end
of the earth
which was
a nuclear event
and not
a carbon dioxide
event.
Maybe don't quote me
on that one
but do think
about it.
So let me come
thirdly to
the half of what
I wanted to say
tonight
and this is
to ask ourselves
what are the
biblical considerations
that apply
to this?
Clearly
we are part
of the created
order
and God
has given
us
the creation
to enjoy.
I don't know
if you watch
Songs of Praise
my wife and I
do it most
Sunday afternoons
in fact
we've found
Songs of Praise
a particularly
uplifting experience
in the course
of this lockdown
and there was
a very interesting
program today
from Dundee
just across
the Tay
and it was
a beautiful
program
and one of
the features
in the program
was the Compass
Christian Center
where young people
were encouraged
to engage
in outdoor
pursuits
and it was
most heartening
to listen to
young people
talking about
their experience
of the beauty
of the world
around them
and of finding
themselves closer
to God
because they were
closer to creation.
So we are part
of creation
but the created
order around us
which we are
expected to take
care of
is there
for a number
of reasons
and I'm going
to try
if I can
and summarize
these in three
under three headings
and the first is
I suggest to you
that creation
is given us
to explore
the wonders
and the beauty
and the diversity
of plants
and animals
and you think
of the ages
of history
from Adam
until now
in which people
have enjoyed
exploring the world
in whatever way
it was possible
on the micro scale
to just look
at its beauty
to explore it
to try and
understand it
and to be able
to live within it
in a way that gives us
a sense of purpose
and a sense of peace
and then when you come
to the 16th
and 17th century
in Europe
you have a group
of Christian
theists
called scientists
Christian theists
who began to explore
the world
in greater depth
Sir Isaac Newton
perhaps
the greatest scientist
of all time
begins to wonder
about falling apples
and falling anything
and uncovers
the law of gravity
and the sense
in which all bodies
of whatever size
are attracted
to one another
and uncovers
the principle
that holds
not just apples
on the branch
of a tree
but holds planets
in their position
in space
one of the forgotten
things about
modern science
is that the pioneers
of modern science
like Newton
and Kepler
and Galileo
and Kelvin
these were individuals
who were theists
committed Christians
who believed
that the natural order
was made
by an almighty hand
and that verse
in Romans 121
that God has made
it plain to us
is to see that
in the natural world
whether we look at it
on the micro scale
or on the micro scale
and we are the beneficiaries
of the advances
of modern science
it is there for us
to enjoy
and who would argue
but that our lives
are not infinitely
more comfortable
than most generations
of human beings
that have lived
before us
but secondly
it is there
to
I hope that says
enjoy
my third point
is that it's there
to exploit
so in case I haven't
changed these around
on my power point
it is there for us
to enjoy
to enjoy its scenery
to enjoy its sustenance
and in return
to work it
and care for it
there is something
about the beauty
of the earth
that helps us
psychologically
just to be
out in the open
is a wonderful experience
it's something
that city dwellers
like me
and probably like
most of you
can miss
very easily
the cities are about
pressure
and tension
and limited time
the countryside
is about beauty
and calm
and all of this
was given us
to enjoy
John Stott
in one of his books
has a very interesting story
about
a vicar
or a bishop
perhaps
who was walking
in the garden
of the bishop's palace
with a friend
and showing him
the garden
and said
said to his friend
you know
isn't God's creation
wonderful
and the old gardener
who overheard this
muttered under his breath
tie
but it was a bit of a mess
when he had it to his cell
in other words
making the point
that we have to work
God's creation
we have to care for it
we have to manage it
in order to draw out of it
some of its beauty
and the third point
I wanted to make
was that the creation
is there for us
to exploit
now
exploit is a bad word
these days
everybody's exploiting
others
filthy capitalists
are exploiting
the poor
we're exploiting
the planet
but actually
I looked up
Chambers dictionary
and the word exploit
though it does sometimes
bear that meaning
one of the meanings of it
is to make the best use
of natural resources
so I'm using it
in that sense
the best use
of natural resources
and it is interesting
that throughout
the scriptures
there is a clear sense
of the importance
of looking after
the created order
by all means
exploiting it
and using it
but also making sure
that we do not
abuse it
a couple of weeks ago
I was speaking
on an equally challenging
subject for Crescent Church
in Belfast
which was about
the morality
of the Canaanite invasion
which is not the easiest
subject to deal with
and I was using
John Lennox's book
Gunning for God
and he's got a chapter
in which he talks about
is the God of the Bible
a despot
and he talks about
the rules of war
that were established
in the Old Testament
I hadn't been
particularly familiar
with this
but in Deuteronomy 20
there's a series of rules
that govern the way
in which the Israelites
went to war
and some of these
were very stringent
indeed
in fact
they were not permitted
to go to war
at all
until
they had exhausted
every possibility
of peace
but one of the things
that I noticed
was that when they went
to war
they were
and this is specifically
mentioned
they were not permitted
to engage
in the wanton destruction
of trees
now you can imagine
why you'd want to
hack down trees
if you're going into battle
not permitted to engage
in the wanton destruction
of trees
and you think about
the commandments
of Leviticus 25
for example
about every seventh year
the ground had to be
left fallow
every 50th year
everything had to be
returned to its
original owners
and the land left
fallow for two years
and John Luddix
points out
that Lord Jonathan
Sachs
the chief rabbi
of the United
Hebrew Congregations
of the Commonwealth
points out
that the books
of Leviticus
and Deuteronomy
contain
the world's first
environmental
legislation
let me read that
to you again
the books of
Leviticus
and Deuteronomy
contain the world's
first environmental
legislation
so God gave us
the earth
to explore
to enjoy
certainly to exploit
in the sense
of deriving from it
what we need
and what will make
our life better
but at the same time
he sets boundaries
to the extent
to which
we can use the resources
of the earth
and the extent
to which
we should be aware
that we're handling
a precious resource
so my final question
as we think about
the big picture
and the small picture
is just ask yourself
who will decide
the end of the world
will we do it
with our motor cars
will we do it
with carbon dioxide
or
is the future
of our planet
in higher hands
I think I know
what the Christian
answer to that is
though it doesn't
in any sense
excuse us
from being good stewards
of what the Lord
has given to us
and so let me finish
with four
very simple
exhortations
one
how should we regard
this subject
which is no doubt
troubling and controversial
well the first
I would suggest
is be confident
God is in control
of his world
man has tried
on many occasions
to rip it apart
and blow it to bits
but it constantly
renews itself
and it recovers
God is in control
of the planet
that's not an excuse
for doing nothing
but it is something
to guide our thinking
secondly
be frugal
now frugal
is not a great one
for 21st century
people in the west
but don't waste things
don't have more of things
than you need
by all means
use what is available
to you
but don't waste it
don't overdo it
don't indulge in ways
that are unnecessary
thirdly
be active
one of the slogans
that I think
the environmental movement
has given us
is
think globally
but act locally
that's a very good
motto for a church
incidentally
in ecclesiastical matters
but even
in environmental matters
there's wisdom
in that
and I live in a little village
and I have to say
that in this little village
there's a group of people
that spend a great deal
of time
making the village
look good
they go around
sorting little
flower beds
and they get
some support
from the council
but most of it
is done voluntarily
I'm ashamed to tell you
I'm not part of it
I'm too busy
making up sermons
on creation care
but there's a group
of people
that do these
kind of things
and so
we should try
and find a way
in which
in expressing
our love
and care
of creation
we play our part
I try to keep
my garden under control
that's a start
but if there are ways
in which we can
involve ourselves
voluntarily
or professionally
we should do so
and let me finish
with the thought
that we should
be thankful
we should be thankful
because
God knows the end
from the beginning
and while we need
to be cautious
about the great
problems facing us
including climate change
we need to understand
that the world
ultimately
is in the hands
of its creator
and he knows best
how to determine
the future
thank you for listening
so well
let me just pray
briefly
Lord thank you
for such a beautiful
world that you have
made us part of
thank you for the beauty
of the summer
and the autumn
thank you also
for the rugged beauty
of storm and sea
and wind and winter
and we thank you
for everything
that speaks
of your powerful hand
make us thankful
for the creation
we have inherited
and make us diligent
in our use of it
we ask for Jesus' sake
Amen
amen
Thank you.