The Season of Creation, usually runs from 1 September to 4 October, culminating in a Harvest Festival on October 5th.

The season is an annual ecumenical celebration of prayer and action observed by Christians together across six continents, it is an opportunity to consider and to renew our relationship with our Creator and with all creation in which we share our common home.

Each year a Biblical text is chosen for the season and this year’s verses come from Isaiah Chapter 32 in which the prophet Isaiah describes the desolation of Creation in his own time, a creation devoid of peace because of the lack of justice and the broken relationship between God and humankind. Isaiah’s description of devastated cities and wastelands eloquently stresses the fact that human destructive behaviours have a negative impact on the Earth. Surely, we can see the parallels in our own time, and this time the threat to life is existential.

So where does HOPE fit into our desolated world today?

Well, hope is a verb and so hope comes from action; ‘peace with creation’ can only come through practising hope.

What action can we take as individuals and as church to bring that biblical peace that flows from the restoration of value in all things, that comes from justice?

In the well-known cry ‘No Justice: No Peace’ we hear the instruction to seek justice.

This is not about recycling, or bags for life, or veg boxes, this is about the fight for justice, for the Amazon, for the endangered species, for the air we breathe, for the poor.

This is no small thing, this demands of us that we exercise righteous anger just as Jesus did in his time, against the iniquities of our time; that we speak of and raise awareness about the harm we see all around us.

It means welcoming the refugee from Sudan where there is drought and famine, supporting indigenous land defenders with our voices and our money, reducing our own consumption, speaking out against continued fossil fuel extraction, acknowledging that as a temperate country we will have to provide sanctuary to those whose land has become uninhabitable, demanding radical change from our institutions. We have to be brave, but we do not have to be brave alone, we have each other… and I believe that when we are brave, we open the door to the deep peace that is ‘of God’. The deep peace that comes from stepping from a frozen sense of impotence into our power as people of faith and naming the sins of the day.

You see, to hope in a biblical context does not mean to stand still and be quiet, but to act, to pray, to change, that is to repent in a deep and active way and to be outspoken like the prophets against the desolation we see in our times. None of this can happen overnight, none of this can be left to the few, which is why the Season of Creation can act as a wake-up call for all of us to come together for the long haul that could bring about that ‘Peace with Creation’ we all yearn for.