PEACE WITH CREATION

Posted: 19.09.25 in Articles category

‘Peace with Creation’ is this year’s theme for Creation-tide and how I wish it was true! Yet as each year passes, we see more evidence of humankind’s destructive impact on the natural world. We are clearly NOT living in peace with creation as we continue destroying forests, polluting seas and critically endangering so much of the world’s wildlife. We are now destabilising the earth’s climate dynamics, seemingly determined to cause irreversible damage.

The resource literature for this year’s Season of Creation offers the ancient image of the potter at the wheel. The OT prophet Jeremiah was sent by God to watch a potter at work shaping a pot from clay in his hands. When the clay became misshapen, the potter didn’t throw it away, but instead he patiently re-worked and re-shaped it until the point that he was satisfied with what he had made.  

This image of the potter reminds us that the world is not static or fully completed. On the contrary, it is dynamic, turning on a potter’s wheel being shaped into beauty or misshapen and disfigured by our exploitation. We are reminded to live in such a way that all life can flourish together and to understand creation is not something for us to conquer but to care for.

Sadly, we don’t currently live in peace with creation, but it is surely time to make our peace with creation as our Maker requires us. Creation-tide closes on 4 October with the Feast Day of Francis of Assisi, and I am reminded of his words asking to be made a channel of God’s peace, bringing hope where there’s despair and light where there is darkness.                  

Let me close with the special prayer written for this Season of Creation:

Almighty God, you formed the earth and all creation in wisdom and love, and you hold all things in your tender hands: reshape our lives, turning us, renewing us, making our hearts supple through the refreshing of your spirit, and teaching us to live in peace with your creation, that the world may rejoice and all peoples walk in your ways: through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.