CREATION HEALING HOPE
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Jo Swinney has called ‘ the longhaul with the humble .’ This is what was expressed by Dave Bookless not long ago 2 when he wrote that what lifted his head in the face of widespread creational degradation was seeing how , even so , places have been transformed and communities restored , through the amazing work of Christians who have persistently and faithfully lived there for many years . These places and people are a reflection of a ‘ light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome ’. None of the people involved would think of themselves as heroes , and the land areas they have affected are often not very great , but all of them have made a profound difference . The places are only fractionally measured in the grand scale of things , although in some cases that difference can be seen from space in forest cover and in changes on landscape itself .
Lynn Clayton ’ s decades of work in Sulawesi ’ s Nantu Forest is that kind of work , still showing green on the satellite imagery in contrast to the barren browns that surround it . It shows up in the efforts of the A Rocha Portugal team who have battled for the ecological integrity of the Alvor estuary for over thirty years now . Over those three decades they have persistently engaged in the truth-telling of good science , patiently opposing illegal building projects and a series of destructive assaults on extremely rare habitats , with the faithful presence of a loving community who are unfailingly committed to all around them .
The current struggle of the Kenyan A Rocha team is making a difference to slow the assault on the Dakatcha forest , just as the Ghanaian team engage in their own struggle for the forest at Atewa . Equally , in beleaguered Lebanon , the Aammiq wetland in the Bekaa Valley continues to flourish and provide a haven for millions of migrating birds despite almost unlimited pressures on the site . The essential element in its survival has been the desire of local communities and landowners to see it remain , and that has only been possible through great dedication from all involved . Now it has gained even more significance as a poignant testimony to Chris and Susanna Naylor , the leaders of the A Rocha project there for over a decade , who lost their lives last year in a road accident in South Africa , in another terrible challenge to our hold on hope . All of us can find consolation in what Chris often referred to as ‘ the gospel written in the landscape ’.
The active work of hope
However , if we shift the question from how we personally can remain hopeful to how we can find hope in what we do , we could be drawn to a second kind of hope , that which is found in the work itself . As people created in God ’ s image , we are called to care for his creation , and that caring is good work . The biblically resonant words echo service and nurturing , working and keeping . They are certainly ways to shape any working life . Simon Stuart , now CEO of A Rocha International and the former Chair of the IUCN ’ s Species Survival Commission , and Mike Hoffman of the ZSL , the Zoological Society of London , have often argued that conservation works , but we just need to do a lot more of it . 3 , 4 In theological terms , we can be the agents of blessing for the rest of creation , or in consequence of our broken relationship with God , we will increasingly become a blight on the earth . The choice is ours to make , but if we follow God ’ s wise ways in creation , then we will see the earth restored around us . We can work with the grain of creation which seems to carry in itself remarkable resilience ; the gracefilled quality of time can be an agent of healing if creation is left to breathe .
Good work that does not deplete creation is possible for us all and it is not just for those who ‘ love nature ’, or who are conservation professionals . The urgent need to transform all the ways that we interact with God ’ s creation , whether it is through manufacturing , farming , fishing or finance , or any other form of human culture making , will lead us to creation caring work . Those inconvenient Attenborough facts make it clear that we cannot continue to follow destructive and extractive roads to economic growth or personal satisfaction .
Three reasons for hope
1 The character of God
Of course , our own survival demands a living earth and not the desert towards which we are heading so fast . But Christians find an even more compelling reason to abandon a materialistic narrative of personal consumption at the cost of the poor and the planet , in the character of the God we believe in . It is in deepening our knowledge of God that we find the only grounds for hope , because – as the Apostle Paul , himself no stranger to suffering , insists – that hope is not seen . That unseen quality of hope will extend to our being unable to detect trends which might lead us to be optimistic . Hope has to lie in the unseen to be hope at all .
2 The promises of God
This is intensely practical because if we are to begin hopeful journeys , other guideposts than promising signs must be found . Shortly before she died in the car accident last year my wife Miranda wrote to a friend ‘ All living things do their most significant growing in the darkness , whether of womb or soil or egg or seed …’ We begin our hope journeys in the dark , but the direction of the journey is set by what we come to know as true – that our God is a loving God , and as Romans 8 tells us , creation shares our own possibilities in redemption and has the potential for a ‘ glorious freedom ’. We have come to trust in Jesus , the resurrection and the life , and in the redemption of ‘ all things ’ and that the groaning of creation will give way to ‘ glorious freedom ’. Whether we face catastrophe in our personal circumstances , or the