Out of the Mouth of Babes
Greta Thunburg, the Swedish children’s champion, raised her small voice to declare enough was enough. She sat on government steps holding a cardboard placard and started a worldwide children’s movement speaking truth to power. Greta spoke to the United Nations pleading for honest action to safeguard the planet; to allow it to rest and breathe and be renewed.
With more than a hint of rebellion in her speeches, she called for urgency to address issues of climate change. She claimed ‘our house is falling apart’ and criticised leaders for ‘stealing’ her ‘dreams with empty words’. She accused them of promulgating misleading information, misusing data and making promises that fall woefully short.
Who listened?
Most thought that she would simply lose popularity and her movement “The Voice of the Planet’ would be silenced.
However, she declared, ‘this is only the beginning’.
And so it is …
For now the world is facing its biggest global disaster known to modern man.
An invisible plague, covid-19, is coming to every home on the planet. The world market economy is collapsing in its wake. Carbon emissions causing global warming have evolved into a global pandemic; plastic pollution suffocating seas, has advanced into an invisible viral contagion asphyxiating breath.
Surely, the voice of the planet cries ‘enough!’.
We cannot say that we were not warned; not advised that global dynasties have clay feet!
What God meant for good, man has meant for profit; to subjugate and enslave.
The beauty of creation God declared ‘good’. ‘Man’, he said, ’very good’. I wonder, is He is saying this now?
We cannot say we were not warned.
Has The Sunday Trading Act of 1994 caused twenty six years of ‘un-rest? In all this time the earth has not stopped groaning; it has not taken breath. It has ploughed on regardless of the consequences. It is now ravished and robbed; animals, rare and exotic, are hunted to extinction. Beauty is lost! And our fragile ecosystem is fighting for survival.
In these past twenty six years man hasn’t rested, fields haven’t been left fallow, God has not been thanked and praised. The economic machine has manducated through time, chewing all that lay in its path. The earth, its beauty, its splendour - violated.
Where we have looked away, we can no longer!
For now we all are forced to fight an invisible enemy. We are obliged to stay in doors, to rest, to wonder, to think on, to consider, to contemplate where we have gone so dreadfully wrong. Now we wear a different kind of face mask; one that we hope protects us from covid-19, and its rabid hunger to debilitate our respiratory systems.
The air we have polluted; the ozone we have opened; the seas we have suffocated; the turning away when the earth could not breathe; the theft of its rest; has found us wanting; found us inadequate to ‘take care of the garden’.
Now we are all asking, will God allow what he considered good, to be destroyed? Will he allow man to be wiped off the face or the earth?
Has He sent another child, one who thinks differently and cares deeply, to warn us that ‘this is just the beginning’ unless we turn from our ungodly ways.
Has God sent Geta Thurnburg to share ‘some very bad news’ that our violent actions will reap some terrorising consequences? Will God stop this covid plaque once we adhere to the warning?
Are we too late?
Is there hope that we can change our ways and allow the earth to heal? Are we truly sorry for robbing children of their childhoods and their dreams?
Will God make the earth ‘good’ again? Will he atone, once again, for our bad?
Will man make the seventh day holy and give praise to Almighty God?
Will he rest from toil so that the earth can catch its breath? Will he learn from the warnings?
I can only hope as Greta believes, ‘no one is too small to make a difference’.
Written by Jo-Ann Hughes. 29 March 2020
Comments