(The Nationalist, 1 July 2005)
Over and over, nature gives humanity a second chance. Look for instance at plants: vandalized trees send out new shoots, grass grows on rubbish dumps, flowers spring up in scrap yards. Or look at a baby – fresh, open, smiling, healthy, its mind a blank sheet, receptive to whatever we give it. Look at ourselves later in life: sometimes bitter, angry, resentful, full of chips on the shoulder. What are we doing to our world and ourselves? Where we create dirt, destruction and death, nature goes on creating life, hope and beauty.
The saddest memory I can recall in my life is of seeing a line of refugees trudging along a road-side, fleeing from a stupid, unnecessary, and avoidable conflict, begun by a drunken soldier. They were carrying whatever they could salvage from their homes in suitcases, or in bundles on their heads. A lucky few had a wheelbarrow. That’s not the way God meant life to be. God meant us to live in peace. War is our doing, not God’s or nature’s.
We have made our world complicated, sometimes very much so. A lot of this is dictated by fear and suspicion. We need to think of possible legal complications in all sorts of routine situations. A simple example: we have to lock everything and insure everything. William Penn, the seventeenth-century Quaker, (and founder of Pennsylvania) said, ‘People must follow the ten commandments of God or they condemn themselves to the ten thousand commandments of men’.
Churches used to be considered sacred places. Now they have to be locked during the day. The one where I serve has three CCTV cameras recording everything that happens in the sanctuary, the porch and the car park. That’s for protection against theft, vandalism and bogus compensation claims. It just makes life less free for everyone. Incense, too, is gone; it activates smoke alarms.
Nature offers an image of God never ceasing to give humanity a fresh chance, always patient, always hoping, always willing to try again. If we adopt the priorities, standards and ideals of God as revealed in Jesus, and commit ourselves to them, we will find that life – for all of us – is easier, better, more human, more worthy of the name of Christian.
For those in a hurry: ‘Pray as you can, not as you can’t’. (Mark Gibbard)