We continue our JUST LENT course this week, as we gather at St Paul’s Church Grangetown on Wednesday at 7pm. We explore justice for God’s Creation. Here’s a brief introduction.
This monument, moved from just outside Central Railway Station to Cardiff Bay Wetland is intended to reflect the mountains which surround Cardiff, and the life of the valleys which have now become so much greener in its post-industrial age.
Pit heads and wheels long ago gave way to wind turbines which are scattered on the mountaintops, and the coal tips and slag heaps have given way to green mountains as nature returns once more, and the valley communities seek a new future. We are now well aware of the impact that we have upon the planet, and the global environmental damage done by the dominant and destructive hand of humans.
There are many challenges and much that must change before the planet is brought to breaking point. It’s not too late.
What is our calling as Christians? If we return to the Genesis story of Creation, we read that ‘God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good.’ How good a job does God think we human beings have made in being stewards of the gifts he has given us? The world is God’s gift to us, and he set us as stewards of all that he has made. St Charles Foucauld prayed “Give me the grace to see nothing else but you, nothing but you in all created things; never to be arrested by them, never to see the natural or spiritual beauty that is in them as being born of themselves, but only as being part of you.” If we are able to make that prayer our own, how on earth can we carry on regardless?
It’s not only war which displaces and devastates people. The environmental damage we are doing to the world is also to blame. Whilst the responsibility of governments and leaders lies heavy, so it also falls to each of us to live responsibly upon this earth, to play our part in caring for the created order, to treat with gentleness and gratitude the gifts that God has given us. The further we live apart from and in contradiction to the natural world, the further we stray from the designs of God, and from God himself.
Every small thing we do can have a major impact for good or ill. The molehills of our lives can become mountains of change – if we act now and live well, as we seek God’s justice for all he has created.
South Cardiff Ministry Area 