We are here to help people love and worship God. We aim to be, and encourage others to become, committed and active disciples of Jesus,
who love God and worship him, who know the power of the Holy Spirit and who show God’s love in every part of their lives.
I was glad to be in Northumberland on a week’s annual leave with my family when the June heatwave hit Sheffield. The weather on the Northumbrian coast was about ten degrees cooler than in Sheffield!
I am old enough to remember the long heat wave of 1976 - mainly because I got badly sunburned. It has taken fifty years for the temperature record of 1976 to be broken (And it was broken twice in the same week). Heatwaves used to be a once or twice in a century phenomenon; now they seem to be happening every two or three years. We are told that they are something that we will have to learn to live with.
Someone explained to me the difference between 1976 and today. In 1976 the heatwave was fairly limited in scale, mainly hitting the UK - that, said my friend, is weather. Today the heatwave spreads across many nations, and that is climate.
It seems that the only people who are still denying that the climate is changing are oil firms!
I wonder what conditions my grandchildren will inherit? I wonder what the increasing temperatures will do to our planet and what it will mean for people living in fifty or sixty years time? And, of course, I don’t know. But I do worry.
For many years I have prayed for peace to enfold our world; I have prayed for peace between the nations. Now I also pray for a more peaceful relationship with our planet, with God’s creation. When I pray for the healing of the nations I also now pray for the healing of God’s creation.
The world is not an endless store of resources for us to plunder at will. It is our home; it is God’s creation and God’s gift to the peoples of the world - to all of the peoples of the world. When I go about I do not see the world as a collection of materials; I see a living planet, I see God present and at work in creation.
As I pray for this world and for its peoples, I am aware that I have no solution, that there is very little practical that I can do. But I can do a little; and I also know from history that when many people do the little that they can do, then the world changes. I can take responsibility for the changes that I can make to my life to have a better relationship with God’s creation. I can bring to bear my little bit of influence. And so can you!
I worry about the future. I pray for future generations. I ask God to act, to bring healing to the creation. And I believe that God asks me to act too. To do the little that I can do to be a good steward of this wonderful, beautiful, mysterious creation that God has given us as our home. Change has to begin, and it has to begin with me.
God bless,
Tim.
St Mary's Church, Priory Road, Ecclesfield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S35 9XZ, United Kingdom
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