We will have been thinking about the coming of the true King. Through the Advent season, we’re sure to have looked back with joy to the announcement of His birth. We’ve likely looked, also, to the future with longing for the day of the return of the King, when all things will be put right. And perhaps we’ve had the space, held between joy and longing, to lament the darkness.
Advent and Christmas are annual reminders that we are uniquely placed as Christians to see both the beauty of creation and its brokenness. Celebrating the One who came to redeem and who will come again to restore all creation, we share both the Creator’s joy and His lament, in the sure expectation of a world-made-right.
This past year we may have felt heartened by signature of the Global Oceans Treaty – to protect 30% of the world’s oceans – and levelling off (tentatively and belatedly) and maybe falling emissions in China, and the slowing of deforestation in the Amazon. But also rightly lamented the coming and going of yet another inconclusive climate COP, failed Plastics Treaty negotiations, another widespread “bleaching” of coral reefs, and the intensity of the storms in the Philippines and Jamaica. Despite some positives, the symptoms of what climate scientist Mike Berners-Lee calls the “polycrisis” – climate change, plastic pollution, so-called “forever-chemicals”, loss of wildlife – persist and deepen.
Setting the record straight on climate 'alarmism'
"Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace. [1]"Don’t worry, everything’s fine, carry on as you are" – …