Nestled Side by Side with Our Sleeves Rolled Up

Felicity McCormack, a homesick climate scientist, calls us to embodied faithfulness that is rooted in community.

I am a Tasmanian living in a mainland city and yearning to one day return home. There’s a constant struggle inside me: why can’t I accept the here and now, embrace it for what it is, and even come to love it? I miss the clean air of my home, that with the first breath, makes my whole body relax from the pent-up tension of city life; I miss the funny little birds with their funny little ways (the magpies in Lutruwita/Tasmania don’t swoop because they have such good lives they don’t need to be aggressive - but don’t go there, it’s awful*).

This longing is perhaps a shadow of what it means to hope in the Biblical sense: to wait on God, yearning deeply for a future of restoration of the created order that we might never taste, but that we know is good because God has written it into our very being. 

This kind of hope is not circumstantial. And as a climate scientist, that’s difficult to swallow when I think about what it means for this beautiful, beautiful Earth that we are part of. The more I learn about climate change, the more I come to understand how deeply we have failed in our calling to be God’s good gardeners - to care for the Earth; to leave this place better than when we found it. Some of what we are breaking through our disobedience and neglect will not be restored in our lifetimes - potentially not for millennia. Some things might be lost forever: species, ecosystems, entire biomes.

And yet, this kind of hope is not rooted in what we can see or salvage, but in the person of Jesus - his life, death, resurrection, and continuing reign. Because of Jesus “all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe…will one day get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies (Colossians 1:18-20 MSG)".

Hope, then, is not passive. As David Orr once penned: “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” We’re not called to naive optimism, but to embodied faithfulness: to get to work. Even if I don’t get the chance to taste the final redemption of all creation in my lifetime, I will not give up. I will choose, again and again (as brutally difficult as it sometimes is, so thank God for those around me who nest me and build me up), to partner with God to become more like Jesus: to love as he loved, to care as he cared, and to walk in obedience as an image-bearer, bringing God’s good news here on Earth. And my hope is that we learn to do this better together - not perfectly, but with humility, courage, and a willingness to be transformed. That in community, we bear witness to a different kind of story: one where restoration is both now and not yet, and where we work side by side, sleeves rolled up.

*This is something that all Tasmanians say to try and ward off would-be tourists. Source unknown; I think it came from First Dog on the Moon?

This reflection is from week four of our Season of Creation Bible Study Series, 'All Things New – Faith, Creation, and the Wider Story of God'. This five-week series explores how God’s work of renewal embraces all of creation. From Genesis to Revelation, discover how our faith calls us to both personal transformation and collective, hope-filled action. Download our study here -www.commongrace.org.au/season_of_creation_bible_study