I remember visiting western Scotland for the first time, many years ago. We were camping in Dumfries and Galloway, a beautiful part of the country and my eyes nearly popped out of my head as I saw palm trees growing along the coastline. I thought that this was to be expected in some of our warmer parts of the country like Devon and Cornwall, but not in Scotland. I was unaware at the time that the reason for this is that the gulf stream runs up the Atlantic to the west of the UK bringing the warm air up from the south. No doubt, we have all watched the weather forecast and seen the patterns of the isobars hoping that an area of high pressure will sit right above the place where we are planning on spending our summer holidays and we have become familiar with the terms high and low pressure and wind direction and the like.
I wonder at the world God created and whilst I appreciate the views of scientists, which are sometimes seen as undermining my Christian faith, I still marvel at the wonder of creation, and the more I learn about the world, the more I hunger to know. There is something wonderful that the whole balance of nature is held delicately by streams of air forming as many as eight dips in the northern hemisphere with the downward trajectory carrying cold air from the ice cap and the upward flow carrying warm air from the equator and for most of the time we know nothing about this, but the impact is astounding. The whole of nature depends on these air streams, which is why certain crops grow in certain areas and not in others. I can not help but stand in awe and struggle to believe that all this happened by accident.
At my most flippant, I think “what’s the harm in the movement of air streams” I could quite fancy the idea of living in the Gulf stream, with warm weather and could happily put up with a few palm trees if my heating bills plummeted. But the shifting of air streams due to global warming is having a devastating impact on the environment, throwing the whole world out of its delicate balance. We have all lived through extreme weather conditions, when the wind has blown, the rain poured, the snow brought the nation to a standstill, we have all been affected at times by floods, fallen trees and referred to these events as “acts of God” and maybe we are right, when things go wrong and there is no explanation, blame God.
The truth is that as we journey through our nine weeks of learning about the crisis facing the world, we can start to see that our abuse of the planet and it’s resources is literally throwing the whole balance of nature into disarray and we are the generation to make a difference, whether we are religious or not. Take a moment to look again at the picture above and be thankful.
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A prayer for this week:
Pray for an understanding of the delicate balance of nature, and its vulnerability to our carelessness, so that we may continue to rejoice in the wonder of God’s creation