Category: Climate Change

Cars, Trucks, and Trains …

And Other Great Human Things (and Disasters)

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Ford Model T and VW type 11 Luxus at the Vienna Technical Museum.

The Model T and the VW Bug

are among the most mass-produced car models in history.

What they and others have wrought!

Proverbs 19:21

The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.

Acts of the Apostles 1:6-9

So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Words of Grace For Today

The plans of mice and men and women; all are temporized by our inabilities to execute the plans, but even more by our inability to foresee the full impact of the consequences, intended and unintended, by our plans.

In 1769 did Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot think of the consequences of violent storms from climate change when he created the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation; or did Carl Benz when he produced several identical copies of the first practical, marketable, gasoline-powered automobile for everyday use; or did the many vehicle manufacturers since?

Could Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford, in 1901 foresee the threat to life (not only by nuclear weapons, by accidents ‘salting the earth’, and waste that takes millions of years to decay to safe levels, but also by the political destabilization nuclear power causes and the ensuing denials of ‘global warming’ – better referred to as climate change) with their discovery that radioactivity was part of the process by which atoms changed from one kind to another, involving the release of energy. Soddy wrote that atomic energy offered the possibility to transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole earth one smiling Garden of Eden. Did he conceive at all what melting the ice at the poles would do to the oceans, weather, and sustainability of life on earth? Yes he was aware that his discovery could also make possible terrible new weapons, but did he imagine what that would bring us? ‘Hiding under desks in the halls’ certainly cannot save us from this threat to all life on earth.

Doch, God knew all this and more, namely everything that humans would plan, try to do, succeed at and fail at, and still God created us foolish humans.

How could God do such a thing?

Out of love, and the choice to share love with us, for if we are to love, then we must freely choose it (otherwise it is not love) and therefore we must also be able to choose not to love. That choice not to love God, ourselves, and our neighbours (even our enemies) is the foundation of all our foolish evil and unforeseen consequences that plague us now. Climate change is only one example, as here we suffer wildfires and smoke making life a lot more challenging that it already was.

How did God deal with all our foolish plans?

God sent Jesus to show us how to live out the love God has for us.

The simplest thing, it is, this love. Yet it is also the most difficult and complex thing to live out. We can dream it easily enough. Doing it is a whole other thing, which we only succeed at if God works in us to make it so.

Thank God, God does exactly that.

Ready or not for today: God is at work in us long before the clock ticks into this day, long before the sun rises.

Answer

My Cry!

Saturday, May 6, 2023

When It Is All Darkness,

Getting Darker,

To Whom Do We Turn?

Psalms 18:6-7

In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because God was angry.

Mark 4:38

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’

Words of Grace For Today

As he travelled, studying and practising healing on those who came to him desperate for help, Julius came across this fragment of writing.

Last night the river rose another 2 meters. It’s now 6 meters over flood levels. Both bridges to town are covered and the only way to town is up the point of the valley’s junction, up and across the prairie fields (through two cattle fences -but that is much better than up the old railroad grade winding up to the prairie) to the road to the power station. Then back towards town, but then further away to reach the road that goes across the top of the dam and finally on 39 into town, all told more than 45 minutes instead of the usual 5 minutes. The yard, the old house, the drive and the well are all flooded. If tonight the river rises again even another meter this house will flood like all the neighbours have already in the last two weeks. What will we do then? Will we have power? Will the house wash away? Will we be washed away as well? It’s been so many days now, each with a new report of it getting worse with new threats and new losses. I’ve cried for help so many times. I’m out of voice to cry.

Julius knew this had been just the beginning of the angry climate. Now they were fortunate to live in a place high enough and stable enough that threats were infrequent, only 50 or so a year. One neighbour of their community had fled from an area not even that far away, a community called Fisigner, when a river had flooded and taken 10 homes in the first hour. Everyone left had run. They had looked for other survivors whenever they met other people, or as Julius travelled about, but there were no news of any Fisigner survivors.

Julius thought, what could they do if, when the called to God to be saved, God answered with anger and more violent storms and floods and wildfires and earthquakes. Then he remembered how Jesus woke from his resting in that fishing boat with Peter and the others. The seas had churned and threatened their very lives, yet Jesus was calm. He spoke and the water and the wind were calmed.

Julius decided he would remember that as God’s answer to their pleas.

Looking

Through Sun Rays and Time

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Looking Through Smoke and Mirrors,

to the Divine.

Psalm 99:5

Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!

Acts of the Apostles 4:31

When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

Words of Grace For Today

It’s a marvellous contraption, prayer is. Not that many see it that way, yet in the beginning there was no prayer, and for many millennia humans had forgotten about this contraption. The rediscovery of it has changed lives and the way the world works. God knows we need it as we face a fourth world war.

Sotorus

That from Sotorus’ paper journal, discovered with 11 others in the year 4391.

But back to the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word.

God spoke and the universe was created.

Humans spoke. Sometimes they spoke to God and they called it prayer. A contraption that allowed mortal beings to speak directly to the immortal creator of the universe. But most often when humans spoke all sorts of chaos ensued, tainted as every good intention was with intentions to make their own lives better, the cost to others be damned. And the humans damned the whole universe with their words and by their actions until in the year 2302 the earth ceased to support the 12 plus billion humans on it. Viruses wiped out 7/8ths of all people and half of what was left of other animals, birds and fish. In that same year earthquakes ripped every continent in pieces and violent ‘climate-changed-vicious’ storms wiped out what was left of every city within 50 miles of the new coastlines.

There wasn’t a city left with any building more than two stories high. No services existed anywhere.

Life became brutal for everyone …

Until groups of people gathered to live and work together. One group collected in an old warehouse area next to some of the only remaining arable land next to one of the new lakes fed by the new rivers the earthquakes created. They called themselves the Iblers.

This was not the only group who gathered. There were hundreds of them across the earth as it was the only way to survive against the wild storms and the few vicious animals left alive who survived by preying on the dead and the living, somehow not contracting any of the deadly viruses, or at least not suffering from them.

The Iblers had an old book in an old language that only one person could read. She taught others. In it they read of a thing called prayer, talking to God the creator of the universe. They practised it three times each day, twice alone at waking and sleeping, and once in the noon light gathered together. Slowly this practise changed the people, almost imperceptibly. Their transformation was slow and steady so that years later they were a content, hardworking, and thriving community, with children everywhere, with struggles galore, conflict still, but always great effort to sustain hope through love and grace. The book’s torn cover identified it as an IBLE.

Now in the year 5402 we give thanks for the Iblers and their rediscovery of the contraption called prayer, for with it we sustain hope, and love, and grace, and …

life itself

morning

noon

and

night.

Editor’s Note: Maybe I got the dates all wrong; the records are quite smudged and the air is smokey more often than not leaving a permanent haze in my eyesight, yet it is clear that contraption prayer is powerful and to be used daily, with thanks.

As Long As

The Earth Endures

Thursday, April 6, 2023

A Reclaimed Oil Lease Is Scattered With Dead Limbs.

That’s Nothing Compared to the Chaos of Our Future.

Genesis 8:22

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

Luke 22:19-20

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’

Words of Grace For Today

The earth will not last forever. It will collide inside the Milkyway galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy, if nothing else so disasterous occurs sooner, in about 4.5 billion years or so.

Don’t hold your breath. In a few more hundred years we humans may have made the earth unfriendly for any kind of human life, along with so many other forms of life. Many, many are already extinct, and so many in just the last few decades!

How can we explain this to our descendants, who will struggle more and more just to survive? Will we say, well we enjoyed the power oil provided for our lives, our civilization … even while we corrupted truth at every turn to get the best, the most, the greatest comforts for ourselves while other humans starved to death, died of thirst, succumbed to curable diseases?

The debt load we carry would be unbearable … were it not for Jesus’ sacrifice that we recall every time we celebrate the Eucharist.

God knew how we would be, what we would take from the earth, other life forms, and other humans. So God set it all right with God’s own sacrifice. Jesus gave himself.

And we live free!

Now if we could just get it through our heads that we ought to provide the same amount of love and care to this planet as God has shown us, we might just live as a species for the greater part of 4.5 billion years, and even then we might, through some great miracles and wondrous discoveries, travel to a safe planet in another galaxy that is not set to collide with one of it’s own kind.

…

Each day let us pray, after we have confessed our sins and begged again for forgiveness, that God will give us ears to hear, hearts to learn, and faith to know God’s Grace for our enemies (us among them.)

Delivered

From Our Enemies (Mostly Us)

Friday, March 31, 2023

Our Paths Are Never Without The Shadows of

…

our own evils.

Judges 3:9

But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites, who delivered them, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.

Luke 1:68

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.

Words of Grace For Today

God delivers us

mostly from ourselves

as the agents of evil that permeates all our lives

in surprising and oft denied ways so that we may too easily think all is coming up roses

when in reality the things we do stink more than the sewage pipe from the city dwellers before the first treatment plant.

Which is to say, collectively we make quite a stinking mess of the world.

Lately we see how the world comes back on us and all life, trying to stop us from destroying everything. Wild climate change storms and events that threaten all life on earth.

What are we thinking

other than only for ourselves, the future be damned.

Well it is. The future is quite damned by what we do and fail to do.

We need a saviour, not so simply as a warrior to defeat the enemy soldiers attacking us to rule over us and make us slaves.

No, this saviour needs to save us from ourselves. From our greed, avarice, and wilfulness that leaves us willing to destroy others (and ourselves and all our futures) just so that today (and a few of our tomorrows) may be ours to ‘enjoy’ in comfort.

Ahh! What was God thinking when God created us so capable of such destruction and evil …

if not

that God also created us capable of equally such great love, care, respect, and goodness.

Today, which will we choose to live out?

So Long!

So short

Monday 20 February 2023

Dark Days, Dark Decades!

Hope Forever?

Job 14:1-2

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.

Hebrews 13:14

For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Words of Grace For Today

Of all the projects she could have undertaken, Risha knew this would be her legacy. She’d earned her degrees in political science, biochemistry, philosophy, law, and her PhD in Oceanography.

She had designed the filter system and now led the corporation in charge of implementing the system in 100 locations around the ocean shores. While filtering and cleaning pollutants out of the ocean’s waters, effectively restoring water up to 500 miles around the filter, it would siphon off fresh water and provide irrigation and drinking water for areas that had gone dry and deserted over the last 30 years due to climate change.

The real ‘miracle’ of the filtering was that it could be set to consume carbon dioxide at huge rates. Turned and left on it would leave the air for 100 miles unbreathable, but if turned on and then off again, in cycles, the 100 filters could clear enough carbon dioxide from the air in 10 years to undo the carbon increase from the last 50 years, at least in their locations.

If she could just get 10,000 of the filters up and running within the next five years, they could reverse climate change completely, back to the re-industrial age.

That was her project!

Until the truth of Job was borne out again:

A mortal, born of woman … comes up like a flower and withers.

Risha, in the third year, well on her way to the 5000th filter location, came down with cancer. She had blossomed so brightly and so many people had seen and put their trust in her. And then within a month she was gone. Because so many people wanted to get rich from Risha’s project and were fighting with everyone for their own advantage, something she kept at bay while she was alive, the projects ground to a halt, and even the established filters had trouble staying in operation.

Five years later, the last filter shut down for lack of funding.

How had it come to that!?!

There was so much hope for this to save us all, and now our only hope would be in the New Jerusalem.

What a loss? What a typical self-destructive development from miracle and cure to fighting and decay and destruction that would continue as long as one could imagine surviving the onslaught of climate change that had already destroyed a tenth of all the coastal lands, cities and people. Living inland was not easier. Storms and precipitation or droughts had made another 30% of all the land masses uninhabitable, and everywhere else it was more or less a futile struggle to keep going.

God, will we humans ever learn?

Save us!

(yesthereishopealways)

Word-Wise

Tuesday 7 February 2023

Like the Beauty All Around Us,

God’s Word Permeates Everything.

Trust It.

Isaiah 55:10-11

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

John 15:7-8

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Words of Grace For Today

Lots of ‘hot air’ blowing around these days, climate change not the cause. It is the age old thing about humans that deceit always seems a nice short cut to achieving what is desired.

So much ‘hot air’ (lies, deceit, fake news, perjury, corruption from the lowest to the most ‘trusted’ levels of everything – even courts, bishops, and … well everywhere!) floats around one has a real case to say that the case of global warming is due mostly to ‘hot air’.

In fact all the climate change deniers producing fake science, fake news, and fake intelligence kept the obvious from happening sooner, ie the reduction of everything that causes climate change.

But boys will be boys, girls will be girls … OK it’s really lying boys will be lying boys even when the get old. Mean girls will be mean girls even when they get old, and the Devil’s temptations to ‘short cuts’ that destroy the doer and many others keep catching more and more people meaning the increase in ‘hot air’ outstrips any incident of inflation ever.

Our words are very effective, at destruction of life, and at healing life.

No question which God intends for us to use with our words.

Thank God everything is not determined by our words, or there would be no hope for any of us.

God’s Word determines everything, even that we are capable of such ‘hot air’ destruction. God’s Word is simple: life is intended and best lived by accepting our sinfulness, confessing them always, repenting (turning back towards God’s will for us), and accepting God’s sending us out to be imitators of Jesus the Christ: sacrificially giving of ourselves (exercising compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love) so that others may live as God intended us to live.

In a Word: God’s Word for us is that we love God, ourselves, and our neighbours, even our enemies.

Today, as each day, that’s more than enough to keep us busy, focused, and working on making the world a bit better around us for us all.

From Nothing to ?

Saturday 21 January 2023

Not from today, but from the files of this winter.

At that temperature, clothing and shelter is a must. The latest fashions probably will not help, nor need it be a mansion. A good down insulated parka, well insulated boots, and thermal coveralls are a good start, and a shelter of some kind with a heat systems that works well enough. That’s enough to give God thanks and praise.

Job 1:21

He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’

Romans 13:14

Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Words of Grace For Today

While the practicalities of life in the frozen north and in most places around the globe require that humans make provisions for clothing and shelter of various kinds for various seasons;

and while our greed and pride take our drive to sufficiently provide for ourselves and our families into over-drive, so that we get caught up in all sorts of unnecessary patterns of consumption and dress and shelters that are nothing short of amazingly stupid, wasteful, and planet destructive;

and while we then place great social worth measured by the degree of our wasteful provisions for shelter and clothing (and so much much, like transportation) … you know what I mean when we realize that social standing is given to those with the biggest houses (well mansions really) and the most expensive, fancy and impractical clothing, and the biggest, fastest, newest cars and trucks;

and while we hear moaning and groaning from all directions that with inflation one has to cut back on … well extra-curricular activities or new clothes or new vehicles or upgrades to the house … ah mansion or one has to downsize into a palatial mansion instead of being able to live in a ostentatious gargantuan palace-castle-mansion in the best part of the city, or maybe even have to sell off the lake cottage (that mansion by the lake in which three or four families of 5 could comfortably live!);

Given all that it is a gentle reminder back towards health to remember that God gives us life as a naked little infant, and takes life as a breathless corpse (if dressed then the worms will relieve us of that burden) and

our place and station is to give God thanks, instead of trying to out consume our neighbours (today it’s how can we out consume our neighbours by paying for ‘green’ consumption!)

So what will we do this day with the headaches caused by inflation, irresponsible government, climate change, and corruption that is spread thickly from churches to communities to cops to lawyers to courts?

Our work this day is to give God praise and thanks.

It probably would not help to reduce our consumption by 90% and our carbon footprint to a negative value, but we think that may not be possible, right? And yet more than 95% of all humans have consumed far less than 10% of what we consume, and their carbon footprint was minuscule compared to ours. It helped that most lived with less than a quarter (or is it 10%) of the number of humans that we cohabit the earth with today.

Whatever we do our work this day is to give God praise and thanks.

Required Perfection

Thursday 12 January 2023

Oil Fuels Our Circumstances, and Destroys Creation.

Love Fuels Our Hearts and Heals Creation.

Deuteronomy 10:12

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

1 John 2:5

but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him:

Words of Grace For Today

The formula for life is simple, so people say: just do everything just and righteous, obeying God’s commands, and you will live perfectly, well, and blessed.

The formula for a terrible life is simple: do that and you are for sure going to suffer, suffer, suffer.

Even after Jesus’ story is there for us to learn and treasure, even after the light of the star of the Magi has come and gone and we can learn of it and treasure it, even after so many have ‘discovered’ the key to life and faith is God’s Grace and written, preached, and lived so that we can read their words and treasure them, we humans trundle back to our old and failing ways: we live as if it is all up to us and what we do is the key.

Doing, striving, and learning to do better, and even ‘discovering’ all we can about God’s love for us and all creation are certainly crucial parts of life. It’s just that when we place them at the top of our priorities and the top of the causation chain for how life should develop for us, then we are in for lots of miserable living. Oh, we may acquire riches, power, and fame, but our hearts will be miserable.

Our hearts determine more about our lives than our external circumstances. Our hearts guide us to strive for more and more for our greedy, selfish, perverted selves OR

our hearts can guide us to the key to living a blessed life: love.

First we realize and acknowledge anew that God loves us first and most powerfully, overwhelmingly so. Then we can acknowledge and confess again and again that we are greedy, selfish, and destructive people, greatly in need of forgiveness and a new start in life so that we can live free of our woeful sins (as they all are) and live to love others with God’s love, which is to love ourselves as well. Then we realize that even before we sin so terribly, God loves us, and graciously forgives us our past sins and our present sins and even our future sins, all so that we can live free of them, free to love God and God’s creation with all our hearts, minds, and strength.

Then we get to work, strive, learn and delve into making the circumstances of others’ lives better, as a demonstration of how God forgives us, and how God is ready to forgive them.

That’s the blessing of life, and the required ‘perfection’ of life: to rely not on our own sinful selves, but to rely on God’s forgiveness, and then to get working at making life right for others.

When we are unsure of our place with God, then we realize again and again, it is not up to us to fix it, for God has already done that. That is the security of life, the only security in life, the only thing that is sure. God has done it for us, done love extraordinaire though we deserve nothing of it at all, at all.

Chaos? Or Giving?

Tuesday 3 January 2023

The clouds cover the light into the future.

Where shall we turn for life?

Psalms 119:154

Plead my cause and redeem me; give me life according to your promise.

2 Thessalonians 3:3

But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.

Words of Grace For Today

Look around and there is not much ‘good news’ out there.

The unjustifiable war in Ukraine continues with civilians and cities targeted for wholesale destruction.

Europe faces a winter without enough natural gas to stay warm and running at full capacity.

The snow pack is a deep as it was at the end of February last winter and last winter it was the most we’d had for a while. Great for skiing and snowmobiling, but hard on snow clearing budgets and especially the snow clearing budgets that only consist of arm and back power to cover kilometre long driveways.

Covid continues to kill people and combined with the flu and colds and RSV emergency rooms are overfilled and hospitals are going into the third year of overcapacity resulting in staff shortages burning out the staff that are there.

Climate change (an example is the snow pack) promises more storms of all kinds and a few new ones tossed into the mix, more disruptions, more destruction, and a cycle where last year’s extremes are this year’s normals and this year’s extremes become normals next year, until one wonders what normal will look like!

While the causes by ‘big business’ are significant, the message is clear that we, the everyday little people, contribute massively and therefore we are guilty, guilty, guilty for not stopping the progress of climate change long ago when dealing with it were possible. Now we are left with guilt and trying to mitigate, minimize, and survive, if we can.

And, if one cares to pay attention, the Devil is playing the board as freely as ever. Fake news, lies in everyday life, and manipulations for power and control over others is rampant. Try to be one who does not participate and people will see you as vulnerable and gang up on you. The attacks may be violent and obvious, or subtle and deadly nonetheless!

It has been like this in every generation (with different flavours and crises), so much so that the Psalmist could write words thousands of years ago that fit our guilt-ridden, fright-filled, weather stricken mornings very well:

Plead my cause and redeem me; give me life according to your promise.

We know that God promises us life, but it seems that life has just fallen out of our reach yet again, and the best we can do is submit to the chaos, and live as long and well as we can, taking what we can while we can, no matter what it costs others!

Oh, the temptations of the Devil are so powerful. They promise ‘good life’ and deliver death for more and more people.

Our only hope is as Paul wrote to the Thessalonians so many years ago, that

the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen us and guard us from the evil one.

With a quiet, breathless prayer of thanks, we submit, not to the empty promises of chaos, but the blessings of God that are given to us to be shared with others.

Now that’ll give us a full day, a busy week, and a wonder filled year.