THE CREATOR’S HEART FOR HIS CREATION
What does the creator say about His creation? This is a question that everyone should seek to answer well. In the spirit of our vision “nature conserved people transformed” we long to see people being transformed in all areas of their lives physically and spiritually. As Christians we believe that God has spoken and given specific guidelines through His word regarding various things in life; be it children, parents, leaders, neighbors, enemies, worker place among others. In the same way God has also spoken about creation and that is what we set out to share. Our target this time round was the Christians in Palakumi and Marafa areas of Kilifi County. It was such an eye opening experience we had in both areas recently as we conducted creation care trainings to the church in these areas.
Our program always kicks off with a time of praise and worship then introductions and setting the climate by explaining the aim of the training. It was such a joy to sing to the Lord in mostly the local Giriama language using Drums and powerful claps. We had a series of three sessions which are connected to each other. The first session was about God creating heaven and earth and the man’s commission. We saw that God amazingly created all that is there even the invisible and all this was for his glory (Genesis 1:1-31, 2:1-3), Colossians 1:16) God owns the earth and everything therein but has given it to man to manage it. Man’s commission is to work it and take care of it (Psalms 24:1, Genesis 2:15). The kind of leadership that is expected of man in managing his creation is that of servant hood as illustrated in the example of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet(John 13:1-15).
A break was something to consider after the first and this involved singing a famous Giriama song “Mulungu mwenye waumba anadamu mamulike, mario haha tsini ya dzua mamulike Mulungu.” The song means that God Himself created everything under the sun to glorify Him. Everything was so beautiful and perfect until man fell into sin by eating the forbidden fruit. This is what we looked at in the second session of our program. The sweet relationship that was there between God and man, man and man and man and creation was broken. This is because God is holy and cannot withstand sin. God punished the man, woman, serpent and even cursed the land. Sin has led to the groaning of creation that is so evident even today. (Genesis3:17-19,Jeremiah 12:4, Isaiah 24:3-6, Hosea 4:1-3, Romans 8:19-22). We looked at local examples and it is actually a sad reality that trees in these areas are rapidly disappearing for charcoal burning without replacement especially Newtonia hilderbrandtii (mukami). It is to our pity that the relative abundance of Kirks dik dik is diminishing drastically due to massive poaching and habitat destruction.
Is this the end of life or something else can be done to make the situation better? This brings us to the third session which is about Jesus as t
he redeemer of all things and role of the church today. Jesus Christ came to redeem the world. This does not mean man alone but all creation as well. When the relationship with the Creator is restored then man will go ahead to fulfill well his responsibility towards creation as said from the beginning. The church has a big role to play in responding to creation care. The first step is repentance (2nd Chronicles 7:14). Spreading the Gospel to all creation (Mark 16:15). Jesus is Good News to us and so should Christians be Good News to nature. We culminated the training by having open air meetings and showing a film about water running dry in Kenya.
“This is the truth I never understood before,” was the expression of almost everyone who received the training. This led to people repenting and promising to leave their evil ways as they spread the news to others. The members also promised to dig toilets for the church and their homes, collect seeds of indigenous trees to raise seedlings to be planted at the church, schools and homes. However, nothing good comes in a silver plater since we faced several huddles ranging from Technical hick ups and low turn up in some villages.We managed to reach to 10 villages in both areas. What an experience it was!