Glow-in-the-Dark What?
December 9, 2020
John Edgerton
“The poor and needy search for water,
but there is none;
their tongues are parched with thirst.
But I the Lord will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them…
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
and the parched ground into springs…
so that people may see and know,
may consider and understand,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
that the Holy One of Israel has created it.”
~Isaiah 41:17-20 New International Version
God will restore creation, we shall not all perish in climate catastrophe. God will do this out of love for the poor and needy who are being ground into the dust by climate change.
But having faith in God’s promises doesn’t let us off the hook. Instead, faith frees us from paralyzing fear and despair. Faith frees to take courageous action. The Lord shall do it, but as Christians we must align our lives with what God is doing. We must find ways to live in the world as it is and also co-create the world that is to come.
Do not lose heart! You are not alone! In the race to redeem the earth from climate catastrophe, there are many people working for solutions. Grid-level battery storage, graphene based filters to desalinate water on a nano level without heat or electricity, there’s even a guy making houseplants glow in the dark in order to replace electric streetlights with (and I cannot emphasize this enough) huge glow-in-the-dark ferns.
God works in mysterious ways, holy wonders to perform. That is to say, when God says something is going to get done, it’s going to get done. It just might not look the way we thought it would.
Almighty God, restorer of creation, help me be part of Your holy work.
