From our Rural Dean: June 2019
2 Jun 2019 • zzz_Archive
Hi everyone,
We have been asked, over these last couple of months, to think about the way we live. This is because our current lifestyle is unsustainable. The earth, with all that it has been blessed with, is crumbling around us. Climate change, destruction of habitat, farming techniques, loss of biodiversity are all making our environment poorer and that is having an impact on the health of the many systems that support us.
This is nothing new! In the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament), there are warnings for people who overuse the land, who exploit it in order to gain personal wealth at the cost of the rest of the community. Every 7 years, land is meant to be fallow, every 50th year (the year of Jubilee), no exploitation of the land is allowed. Indeed, land that has been taken away is restored and debts are cancelled.
Suddenly we realise that this is true. Even in our scientific age, when we think we know everything, ancient wisdom reminds us that we need to treat creation with care, to look after it for future generations.
So as we thank God for his wonderful creation, the joys of summer, the flowers and the trees, fields and insects, we need to change how we live: to have lower expectations and be happy with less, so that all of God’s creation can flourish, all of God’s beauty be revealed. It is a complex system and we mess with it at great cost!
So every blessing as we seek a more sustainable lifestyle that enables us to enjoy God’s bounty yet not sacrifice it for our greed, but instead make sure it is there for generations yet unborn.