Rachel is Strategic Development Officer - her work currently covers strategy for theology and churches, volunteer coordination, and the mission, value and commitments process. She lives in Sheffield, UK.
A friend this week asked me why I love the sky so much (‘I do mean that question genuinely’, they said). It gave me pause because I hadn’t considered my love of the sky to be overly notable. I also hadn’t actually ever given thought to the reasons why I do, in fact, love the sky.
Biodiversity is a word you won’t find in the Bible, but the concept is profoundly biblical. As we look through the great themes of the Bible, the pattern is clear: God has a passion for biodiversity that runs from beginning to end.
I remember being 13, and watching David Attenborough walking through a jungle, talking about its beauty and vulnerability, and I remember thinking that I was so glad that people like him were in charge, because he would save the rainforests. It feels as if we have been saving the rainforests for my whole life.
She wakes up. She knows she is ready. Ready for her big day. The sun has never been brighter. The sky has never been bluer. This is the day she’s been waiting for all her life. This is the day she has been working so hard to get everything ready for.
I recently returned from a lecturing visit to Hong Kong, Beijing and Yanji. Speaking about environmental sustainability to students and professors in three such very different contexts got me thinking afresh about China’s place in the world and its significance. My thoughts here are inevitably personal and subjective.
Recently, I was in Kathmandu, speaking on creation care to a group of about 90 Christian leaders from across Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. They were really receptive… until I got to God’s future plans for creation. Surely we’re all going to heaven? What about the Rapture? Won’t there be a new creation? Won’t the earth be destroyed by fire?
I was distracted from the documentary by the reactions of my two friends. Jack revelled in the power and skill of the predators, their mastery of timing and feather control, the elegance and efficiency with which they hunted. Jill was horrified by their bloodlust. How could such callous cruelty be part of God’s good creation?
After three years and 36 blogs, I’m taking a short break from writing for Planetwise, so it seems appropriate to conclude this series with Jesus. So let’s turn for a moment and ask who Jesus was and is in relation to the whole created order.
Today’s consumer culture takes a love of new starts to extremes. Fed up with your clothing, computer, phone or furniture? Chuck them out and buy something new. The New Testament is full of ‘new heaven’, ‘new earth’, ‘new Jerusalem’, ‘new creation’. As I grew up I assumed ‘new’ meant exactly what it means in the culture I’m surrounded by.
Once upon a time we believed ‘the sky’s the limit’. Then we discovered ‘space, the final frontier’. Now we reach out ‘to infinity and beyond’. Is there no limit to our ambition? The idea of boundaries has become counter-cultural. It’s why tackling humanity’s footprint never gets to the top of the agendas. We simply don’t want to be told ‘Enough!’
