Here we are in week 3 of our Creation series and day 5 of the Genesis Creation story and it is getting noisy as animals are being made! Get your instrument and a toy animal at the ready to join in and hear we go! Please register your children so I can call out their names! Don't forget to read the Thankful Thought for grown-ups below the video. Do spread the word to any new parents that we exist and get them to email me so we can connect properly. Love & Prayers Claire
Thankful Thought 17th Sept 2020 – God made the animals – Genesis 1 v 20-25
So here we are at day 5 of the creation story and God is getting very busy and the world is getting very noisy. As I read the genesis account I was struck by how God began in the waters and then moved to the air and then the land, filling each with living creatures. I have often been asked why there are no dinosaurs mentioned in the bible and I always quote Genesis 1 v 21 “God created large sea creatures – as being a possible mention! Genesis details that each creature could produce more of it’s own and that God’s words were “Let the earth be filled with animals” God wasn’t doing things by halves – he was making sure the earth was abundant with life in every niche it had to offer. And as throughout the creation story we are told repeatedly that “God saw this was good!”
It is with great sadness then that we read of the decline of so many species of life and particularly of so many animals on the endangered list. That was not part of God’s original plan – he created life to multiply and to fill – not to decline to the point where animal numbers could be counted.
However you look at it – it is our sinful nature of greed that has instead multiplied and filled the earth. I have been extremely thankful in the current season for the animals visiting my garden – the birds, a deer visited recently and today I observed a gorgeous green dragonfly. This virus has stopped us in so many ways that are not so good but in one good way it has stopped our consummation and destruction of the world by grounding us. Just a small reduction in air pollution and a tiny cut in C02 and we have seen nature breath and recover a little.
I pray we never return to pre-covid times of needless travel and greed. I was struck by the lower death rates of the virus in Uganda. Why so low there? Well the people are not obese and diabetes is hardly a thing there. The population is also young, ( a result of HIV and times of war & famine) but a protector in times of co-vid. I hope this virus is a wake-up call to all of us but particularly to us in the rich west, to consider how we tread on this earth. Do we really need to travel so much – polluting as we go? Do we really need to eat so much? How can we better steward this beautiful creation and show that we love our animal neighbours as they are part of God’s gift to us all, and should have chance to multiply as God intended.
I pray that each of us can see God’s world with new loving eyes and from that can flow new loving actions. Love and Prayers Claire x