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Discussion Starters for Lent, Week 3

*The section "We Speak" addresses concrete concerns faced in Australia. We invite you to ask the questions that are relevant to your own context.

Creation: Light

The Bible speaks
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water.
God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that light was good, and God divided light from darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’. Evening came and morning came: the first day. Gen.1: 1-4

In the beginning was the word:
the word was with God
and the word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were came to be,
not one thing had its being but through him.
All that came to be had life through him
and that life was the light of men,
a light that shines in the dark
a light that darkness could not overpower. John 1: 1-5

The Poet Speaks
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; a vapour is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in turn as round earth rolls.
J. Muir,The Earth Speaks (ed. S. Van Matre, Michigan,1983)


We Speak
In 1969 European carp came to an already polluted Murray River. The carp destroyed aquatic plants, leaches and birds, dramatically impacting on the food chain, as well as making the water very muddy with less light for plant growth. From the 1980s to the present day, there has been a massive growth in irrigation, diverting water from the river, reducing the frequency of small floods which nature uses to trigger spawning and breeding. The year 2002 saw yet another massive die-back of red gums …
Recently the Australian federal government has established a ‘Murray Basin Commission’; it, and associated committees, are working towards strategies that will enhance the health of the Murray. Esmey, through the JPIC on behalf of the Province, has written to the government commending them on these initiatives.

See Renewing Creation (South Australian Heads of Churches, 2003) and the Report of the JPIC Committee, 2003.


We Pray
God, creator of our great planet, which you saw as good, and which we see as beautiful, remind us of the importance of light and darkness.
Remind us to allow light into our waters that life may be birthed and grow.
We look to You that our rivers may flow freely and our deserts break into song. Amen