From darkness to light

AS a gentle rain fell over Fiji’s capital, Suva, the PCC Stewardship Team led devotion under a frangipani tree in the garden.

We share with you this reflection on International Mother Earth Day. God bless Mother Earth and may God bless you.

DEVOTION for International Mother Earth Day

Scripture Reading: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said “let there be light” and there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness”  – Genesis 1:1-2

In our reading today, I want to highlight two terms that are expressed in the scripture for our reflection on earth day today, one being darkness and the other being light. The theme for this year’s earth day is “climate action” and in order for climate action to really take place a person must have a sense of climate consciousness. Climate consciousness implies an act of redirection where you can reconfigure your mindset towards justice, once this is possible then an urge of action follows shortly.

When looking at darkness you see it as being one color, or what I would prefer to call it a ‘single color consciousness’. This single color consciousness depicts the one dimensional worldview which is commonly being shared through our global narratives today, where humans have centered themselves in creation and believe that they have the authority to rule over creation. This sort of mentality is very present in our generation today and has allowed people to believe that they are superior, thus creating a culture of greed where humans measure the growth of their economies by their GDP rather than the people’s well being. It has become a contributing factor to the ongoing climate crisis and has overtime put not only nature at risk but also human’s mere existence. However, in the reading it explains how from this darkness, God had birthed light and it was seen to be good. To be enlightened means to have a multi-colored consciousness or a multi-dimensional worldview. The reason why I define this term to be multicolored is because it also involves the inclusion of our environment in this worldview. It involves multiple relationships and speaks on the beauty of diversity in God’s creation where balance and harmony is very much present thus resulting in feeling a sense of justice.

I had wanted to use these two terms from our scripture reading to explain how climate consciousness is vital if wanting to successfully achieve climate action. As I had mentioned earlier climate consciousness talks on shifting your mindset towards justice, the role of climate justice in my own perspective is to maintain or weave together this multi-colored consciousness in order to create a very diverse/colorful mat where humans are in a balanced relationship with nature and there is harmony that is present among the groups. In light of the current pandemic we can also relate the situation to our reading today, before the pandemic many people were focused on this single colored consciousness however with us being locked away and isolated it has allowed earth to rest and has created miracles such as the drastic decrease in pollution rates which many people have come to fascinate over. This fascination has shifted many of our mindsets to a more multicolored worldview where we are now changing our views to try and adapt ourselves to a new kind of normal. Hopefully this message allows us to rethink what kind of new normal we are hoping for and it enables a call for hope where we can weave together the multiple colors and relationships.

As the Bible reads, light was birthed from darkness meaning that there is hope for us to shift our global economies from a single colored consciousness to a multicolored consciousness to help call for action on the climate crisis. Earth day is a great day where us as Christians can reflect on our calling from God to be good stewards for this earth, therefore I suggest we firstly start with focusing on our climate consciousness in order to help us steadily veer ourselves towards finding justice and having action follow after.

Devotion Leader: Iemaima Vaai – PCC Stewardship Team