Charlie Hamilton James - that superb photographer of wildlife - has a new series about a patch of rainforest he bought in Peru. It is of course the same story about the rainforest we have been hearing all my life - as he pointed out. We are chopping it down at a terrifying rate, even though it is our lungs, and an immense and pretty much uncharted resource.
The programme made some good points. Why are we still importing mahogany? Do we really need it?
Charlie and co - including a lovely Brit guy who works out there - investigated the life on a giant mahogany tree that was just about to be (legally) felled. There was so much - some of it uncharted until then I think - all to be made suddenly homeless by us. I couldn't bear to watch as it came down. And Charlie had tears in his eyes.
But, of course, how do the people who live there make their living? When we were introduced to the two illegal loggers on Charlie's bit of rainforest, they turned out to be a tiny and touching pair, father and son, trying to support their families the only way they could. Charlie is left pondering over how to help them. And I know he will.
However, I could only think of Jeremiah 10:23: "It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step." We cannot run this beautiful and complex planet no matter how hard we try.
The incoming Kingdom of God, which is a heavenly government, already ruling from the heavens, already with millions of subjects on the earth, will restore the rainforest. How can we do it, try as we might? The whole world system is against us.
You can see the burning rain forests from space. I know that because we once saw an Imax movie that took us up to the space station and could look down on the earth, and see not only how lovely it is, but what we are doing to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment