Creation Care

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

2 Peter 3:12

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

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.