Recently, a couple of men who work for the local landowner
came along our road with chainsaws and matches. They chopped away at the thick
gorse and broom bushes which lined the roads. They dragged the branches and
trunks into the field and set them on fire. Sometimes they started the fires on
the road verges themselves, leaving nothing but scorched roots.
The aim, and the result, of the slash and burn work was to
give clear visibility along the narrow road, perhaps averting collisions in
future. (Though I’ve not witnessed any collisions due to thick bushes along
this stretch of road, we now need not creep out of our driveway with quite so
much caution.)
I appreciate the greater visibility, but as I surveyed the
scarred landscape yesterday, I remembered the beautiful filigree of millions of
spiders’ webs picked out in dew or frost over those cold winter days. And I
thought of the devastating impact on so many tiny creatures who will have died
in the bonfires, as well as birds who can no longer find shelter and protection
in a leafy landscape now gone.
Indiscriminate actions which destroy the habitats of
innocents hit the headlines with increasing frequency. Policies of slash and
burn destroy the good with the bad, leaving no winners and nothing but a wasted
wilderness in lives and services. Society is the poorer for it, in more ways
than pure economics.
I focus my eyes this morning on a promise of God from Psalm
103. ‘The LORD gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.’
May your justice roll on like a never-ending river, Lord
God. Help me to do your will, to speak your words, to love as you call me to
love, today and every day, preparing the way of the Lord.
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