Episode Transcript
Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, go therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to go teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through australian and international speakers.
And here is today's presenter, Kevin Petrie.
Through his word and through creation, God attempts to remind us of something that we find difficult to grasp, and that is the incredible gulf between our thinking and that of God. The gap that exists between the way that we view life and the way that God sees it. And the analogy as thank you for sharing our scripture reading the analogy shared there, that is as high as the heavens are above the earth.
And that's a fairly big gap. In fact, it's an infinite gap, a measureless gap, and one which as humans we find it difficult to bridge. Greater the works of the lord, says Psalms 111, verse 2.
They are pondered by all who delight in them. You know, at the moment, there is a fair focus going on around the globe in the Olympic Games. And a little bit earlier this year there was the celebration, the 70th year celebration of an event which actually again gained interest in newspapers around the world.
And that was the day that this young man lined up, because he had been dreaming of this day for a few years. And he was one who believed it could be done even when others believed it was not possible. And as he lined up, there was an expectant crowd there at Iffley Road Track, Oxford in the uk, seeing if what was deemed impossible could actually be done.
And as Roger Bannister crossed that finish line and the crowd expectantly waited for the time to be read out over the loudspeaker, the announcer could only get through the very first word before the roar took over and he said, 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Roger Bannister had done what people believed was not possible by 0.6
of a second underneath the 4 minute mile. What interests me, however, is not so much the record being broken, but what happened shortly after that. You see, for years people didn't believe it was even possible.
Some of the scientific writers at the time said the human body would not be able to stand such a feat. But as soon as one person had accomplished that task, suddenly the record was broken. The four minute mile was achieved by so many others.
In fact, 46 days later, the very next person, and if you have a look over the years since, and the records continued to fall, Jim Ryan, the first high school student in 1964, John Walker, the great New Zealand runner, the first to run under 3 minutes 50 and the first to run 100. Steve Scott from the USA ran 136 of them. Iman Coulan, the first, the great Irish runner who ran as a 40 year old underneath 4 minutes.
Daniel Komen from Kenya. The first to run 2 miles in under 8. The Norwegian runner currently at the games, Jacob Ingebristen.
16 years, 250 days. New Zealand's own Cameron Miles breaks the record at 16 years and just over 250 days. So suddenly, it's like as soon as people saw that something could be done and they believed it was possible, suddenly a lot of people are now breaking that barrier.
And I'm talking of course, simply from a human perspective. We're not speaking here in the spiritual realm, which we'll come to. Let's perhaps just look at one other example that people said perhaps it cannot be done.
And that was the climbing of Mount Everest. I'm not deliberately trying to weave a New Zealander into the sermon, but okay, I am. But for many years it seemed impossible, at least some believed it to be, that people could actually climb to the top of Aravarus.
Was it beyond human endurance? And yet again, interesting what happened after. Now it took a little bit longer after these two summited. 29th of May 1953, because there's only a very short window that people can climb.
But then the records began to fall. The first female ascent, 1975. First ascent without supplemental oxygen, 1978.
How about this one? First ascent by a blind climber, hmm, 2001. What about the youngest to reach the summit? How old do you think? 13 years, 10 months. The most time to reach the summit.
You may have seen a broadcast from the news. In May of this year, Rami Rita Sherpa climbed, broke his own record. Climbed it for the 30th time earlier this year.
How about the oldest man ever to summit? Now this guy has got to be a legend. Summited at 80 years old. So if some of you here are looking for something to do in your retirement, we have an idea for you.
They're not counting that in the record books because he needed help to get down, but he got to the top by himself. The point is that as we look at the ceiling that as humans we often put on our lives or in other people's lives. It's interesting to watch.
Once that ceiling has been shown to be broken, how does that impact the behaviour of other people when they believe, when they see that something can be done? And I'd like to turn now from the earthly realm to that of the spiritual. If that is true in simply the earthly realm, what does it look like in the spiritual realm? So we're going to invite you, take your Bibles and we're going to come to 1st Samuel 13 and verse 5 to 14, 1st Samuel chapter 13. And we're going to begin at verse 5.
We're in a dire situation here in 1st Samuel chapter 13, a situation where the Israelites have their back against the wall in an extraordinary way. Let's have a look. Starting verse five, the Philistines assembled to fight Israel with 3,000 chariots, 6,000 charioteers and soldiers as numerous as the sand on the sea.
They went and camped at Michmash, east of Ben Aven. And when the men of Israel saw that the situation was critical and that their army was hard pressed, they hid in caves and thickets among the rocks and in pits and cisterns. Now I think you folk are familiar with the foe here, the Philistines.
And let's just dig a little bit more because while we would rightly see them as these persecuting people of the Old Testament, they were actually seen in their day as some of the most technologically advanced people that there were. Not so long ago they found an ancient burial site from the Philistines and they did some DNA testing and they discovered they were in fact of Greek origin, most likely from the island of Crete. And they were ones who while in the area in which they lived amongst and by the Israelites, they were in fact a fair, a seafaring people who explored and went to many other places.
So for example, here's a map that just shows where they wandered to. And it certainly wasn't just to Judea and where the Israelites many places around the world because they had industries that they were trying to keep current, that they were trying to make thrive. They grew a lot of olives, they produced olive oil and did a lot of trading.
So they were interested in sea coasts and anywhere that they could settle and elbow out a little bit of land and plant their olive groves and carry out their trading expeditions. They were happy. So they didn't actually have real motivation to go inland.
They were keen to stay on the coast and to control enough of the area so that their businesses weren't interrupted. They arrived on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean in round about the 12th century. They were the first nation that archaeologists have come across that have really articulate town planning.
The domestic and industrial areas were separated and there was, you know, great evidence of thought in Architecture in artistry. And they were the first nation on record, archaeologists tell us, that worked out how to create steel and steel weaponry. They found that if they left certain wood in the fire with the iron for a certain period of time, they worked out the technique of turning that into steel.
And so their weaponry was, in fact, those that study rivalries and war between ancient nations say that that development of steel was as important as the hundreds of years later, the development of gunpowder. It was a game changer because now you had weaponry that was not just strong, but it was light, and you could have weapons of reasonable size that previously may not have been manageable. And so you had this technologically advanced nation who had the ability, and they did this, that if things were going wrong in one part of the world, they would bring in and ship in soldiers and resources from other parts of the world to reinforce.
So they were a people to be reckoned with. The other thing which they invested heavily in was the chariot. Now, this one here is an Egyptian chariot, but archaeology suggests that the Philistines adopted the Egyptian style chariot because of its lightness and its strength.
And in the passage here, it talks about 6,000 charioteers, which would make sense because normally they, like the Egyptians, would put two people to a chariot. There was the driver and then generally an archer. Because the Philistines, similar to the Egyptians, didn't engage their chariots in close combat.
They tended to circle around the enemy, spray a few forays of arrows at the enemy, and then whip around to another side. They did carry a type of sword that they also kept in the back. But these were like the tanks of today in that if you were to go against them just with infantry, you are at just an incredible disadvantage, because they had the ability to get round the battlefield, inflict damage and move on before anyone could address it.
So we have the picture of what the Israelites are up against, but it gets worse. So we're going to come. Now we're still in first Samuel 13, but we're going to come to verse 15.
Then Samuel left, Gilgal, went up to Gibeah, and Benjamin and Saul counted the men who were with him. They numbered about 600. But wait, it gets worse.
Verse 19. Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said otherwise. The Hebrews will make swords or spears.
All Israel went down to the Philistines to have their ploughshares, mattocks, axes and sickles sharpened. Verse 22. So on the day of battle, not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in his hand.
Only Saul and his son Jonathan had them. I have no idea what the rest had. Sticks, slings.
They certainly didn't have much in the way of weaponry. So I just want you just to compare the odds. Here we have an army with soldiers as numberless as the sand on the seashore.
They have 3,000 chariots, 6,000 charioteers, and that's against 600 people, only a couple of which had any weaponry. And they were hiding in caves because they were absolutely scared. So there's the odds.
Now there's, you know, you're probably familiar contextual analysis where businesses will find a technique, you know, like identifying the strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunity. The good old SWOT analysis. I'm just wondering what that SWOT analysis would have looked like as Saul huddled with his people in the cave.
I wonder if they identified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, external internal influences, what they would have said. Now, I'm not in any way detracting from business approaches which are important to using all the means we have available to look for success. I'm just simply suggesting that God often looks at things so differently than we do.
You know, my background is that of a school teacher and we do creative writing and we would sometimes do creative writing by giving children a passage that we would tell the beginning of a story, like the first half of a story, and ask them to write the ending. And, you know, you'd get some creative responses, particularly if they were hearing the first part of the story for the first time. In the end, you got to realise that with the boys it was always going to end in violence of some way.
And with the girls, well, there was going to be romance and somebody was going to fall in love and live happily ever after. So when I was marking, I'd always do the boys ones first so that I could enjoy the nicer ones after. But if I had given them the first part of the story that I've just given you and asked them to write the ending, what would the ending have been? I mean, what are the options? What would the analysis tell us to do? Well, you run, you get away from there, you take your families, you escape somewhere else.
I mean, what really are the options? And I'm sure that's what they were all thinking, except for one person. And one person saw things totally different. And I'd like you to come to the next chapter as we go to 1 Samuel 14, because there was someone there who didn't see the analysis like everyone else did, and instead they thought about who they had on their side and what the power of God was and could potentially be in the situation to them, it didn't matter what the odds were on the other side.
Only thing, one thing mattered, and that was God has the ability to do above and beyond all that we ask or imagine. So we find chapter 14, verse 6. Jonathan said to his young armour bearer, come, let's go over.
And he proposes something to his armour bearer, where he says, let's go and take them on, but we'll put out a sign first to see, make sure we're not being presumptuous, to really ensure that God is going to work with us. And he says this amazing thing at the end of verse 6. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.
He is looking at the world through a different lens. He sees the situation not as man sees it, but through the eyes that God bids him to see it. And fortunately he had an armour bearer.
He saw things the same as him. Verse 7. Do all that you have in mind.
His armour bearer said, go ahead, I am with you heart and soul. And so verse 9 and 10, they put out this fleece, you know, if they say, come up to us, we'll go up. And if they say, no, we'll come down to you, then we'll just stay where we are.
So verse 11. Both of them showed themselves to the Philistine outpost. Look, said the Philistines, the Hebrews are crawling out of their holes.
You can just see the laced contempt. The men at the outpost shouted to Jonathan, verse 12 in his armour bearer, come up to us and we'll teach you a lesson. And that was the sign they were waiting for.
Verse 13. Jonathan climbed up using his hands and feet with his armour bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan and his armour bearer, and his armour bearer followed and killed behind him.
In that first attack, Jonathan and his armour bearer killed some 20 men in an area of about half an acre. Verse 15. Panic struck the whole army, those in the camp and field and those in the outposts and raiding parties, and the ground shook.
It was a panic sent by God. And that day there was an incredible victory won. The Philistine army was defeated.
The 600 men came out of their caves and holes. They joined in the fight. And the Philistines, with their numbers as countless as the sand by the sea, and the 3,000 chariots took off and were like scared men.
How different the outcome, how incredible. The amazing victory won. And as I looked at the story and Then looked on in the book of first Samuel, there was something that particularly interested me and it reminded me of the climbing of Everest and it reminded me of the Four Minute Mile.
Because when we think of amazing exploits in the Old Testament, I know as a kid, the one that I heard all the time was David and Goliath. It's interesting that David and Goliath comes after the story. And I can't help but wonder if this was the breaking of that ceiling where others dared to dream that with God things were possible that would never be possible without God's power and his intervention in somebody's life.
And in fact, you go on and you look at second Samuel, I mean, David and Goliath's in first Samuel 17 you go on and look at two Samuel 23, 8, 39. And it talks about David's mighty men. And suddenly everyone's doing exploits tells the story of this guy who was out fighting with the Israelites.
And the Philistines advance and all the Israelites retreat, except for this one guy standing in the middle of the field and he refuses to retreat. And he just takes on the army on his own and there's a great victory. And I can't help wonder if it was inspired by seeing the exploits of what Jonathan and his armour bearer did.
You know, there's an amazing passage that says our Heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing. Those who accept the one principle of making the service of God supreme will find perplexities vanish and a plain path before their feet. What does it mean to us in practical terms? I love this quote from Evangelism 63.
God will have men who will venture anything and everything to save souls. Those who will not move until they can see every step of the way clearly before them will not be of advantage at this time to forward the truth of God. There must be workers now who will push ahead in the dark as well as the light, who will hold up bravely under discouragements and disappointed hopes, and yet work on with faith, with tears and patient hope, sowing beside all waters, trusting the Lord to bring the increase.
God calls for men of nerve, of hope, faith and endurance. You know, sometimes, however, it's not the enemy without that causes us the most issues. We look back at our lives and we see disappointment and failure.
And we wonder how God could ever use someone like us to accomplish anything. That's all good. Jonathan and his armour bearer and the other heroes.
That's all good. If you knew about my life, if you knew about My failures. Then you wouldn't expect anything such as that.
If you had those old doors out the back of your house, what would you do with them? On the bonfire? Yeah, I see some nods. I just put a bonfire up. But other people saw those doors and decided they belonged somewhere.
There was a place for them and a place of beauty. I would have taken that car to see what I could get for scrap metal. Others saw the potential of what it could be.
And yet some objects, I must confess, I shake my head and think I could go to Ikea and replace that. Cheaper than restoring it. Why would you bother? Because bringing beauty out of things that are not beautiful is what some people enjoy doing.
A chair that should have perhaps been at the tip. A hammer that you could have probably replaced cheaper at Bunnings. A wrench that I wouldn't personally have bothered with.
I like the end result. But would have I been patient enough? An old house. Now here I visualise something.
I have to admit, I visualise something. I visualise a bulldozer going straight through the centre and then calling some builders to do something nice. But something nice is what somebody else saw and what they were prepared to invest in.
And I realised when I think about God and what he enjoys most, he specialises in taking chaos and bringing beauty out of it. That's his specialty. And he never gets tired of doing it.
Even if the same person is coming back, needing restoration again, and thy back again, and thy back again as they come truly to Christ, he never gets tired of remaking. I like this passage from Steps to Christ. Your weakness is united to his strength, your ignorance to his wisdom, your frailty to his enduring might.
So you're not to look to yourself, not to let the mind dwell upon self, but look to Christ. Let the mind dwell upon his love, upon the beauty, the perfection of his character. Christ in his self denial, Christ in His humiliation, Christ in His purity and holiness.
Christ in his matchless love. This is the subject for the soul's contemplation. It is by loving him, copying him, depending wholly upon him, that you are to be transformed into his likeness.
I'm not sure what Philistines you have in your life, whether they're external or internal, those things that you know are humanly impossible to surmount. Do not look to self, but to the limitless resources that Ephesians 3:20 reminds us can do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or imagine. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.
The plan of him who works out all things in conformity with the purpose of his will. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. I'd invite you to finish off our service together by singing together and reminding ourselves, as hymn 109 does, of the marvellous love of Christ.
Father God, we thank you for your infinite matchless grace and for your mercy on us who you are transforming and pray you'll continue to do your work in us and build a faith that will see beyond what the human sees and grasp. Hold it of the infinite hand and we thank you in Jesus name. Amen.
This message was made available by the Dora Creek Seventh Day Adventist Church. For more resources like this, visit doracreek Church. Welcome to our series you're NOT Alone, in which Alan Sonter, for many years a missionary educator in the islands of the South Pacific, tell stories that help us to know that God is always watching over us wherever we are.
This episode is entitled an angel in Control. Not only does this God who loves us answer us when we call to him, but because he loves us when we commit our lives to him, he will look after us even when we haven't time to think about what's happening to us. Our story this week comes from Mbuda Bay on the island of Vanu Levu in Fiji.
At the time, I was in charge of a combined primary and junior secondary boarding school situated on the edge of the bay. The main school grounds occupied a fairly flat triangle of land between two ridges that ran down to the edge of the water. Several of the buildings were set close to the lower slopes of the ridges, while others were constructed on flat platforms cut higher up, and these buildings were connected by roads cut into the steep slopes.
On one ridge, the road sloped upwards for perhaps 300 metres and then made a hairpin bend, still rising as it doubled back about 100 metres along the ridge toward a house at the top. Because the area received fairly high rainfall for most of the year, the grass grew quickly and it was quite a job keeping it under control. We had an old Fordson tractor and a slasher, and one of its tasks was to clean up the edges of the roads.
I had taught one of the teachers to drive the tractor, and at the time of our story it had been several months since I had driven the tractor myself, so I was unaware that the brakes were no longer working effectively. On the day of the incident, the teacher, Mozesi, not his real name, was using the tractor to slash the grass on the edge of the road that had the hairpin bend partway up. He had worked up one side of the road to the top and had started back down on the other side, about 30 metres from the bend.
He decided that he should use a higher gear for the downward leg, so he slipped the tractor out of gear. That old tractor did not have a live power takeoff, so the inertia of the slasher blades kept the shaft in the gearbox turning, preventing Mozzzesi from getting the tractor back into ge. In his inexperience, he had not realised that this would happen.
On the slope, the tractor began to move under its own weight, and with Mozzzesi still wrestling with the gear lever, it soon picked up speed. Mozzzi pressed his foot as hard as he could on the brakes, but, alas, they slowed him not a bit. At this point, Mozzi was moving slowly enough to have run the tractor into the gutter on the edge of the road and brought it to a stop against the bank.
But again, his lack of experience caught him out and he could think of nothing except keeping the tractor on the road. As he neared the hairpin, he was still moving slowly enough to take the corner, so he steered the machine around the sharp bend and was then horrified to see the road stretching out seemingly endlessly down the slope into front of him. The gradient of the lower leg of the road was much steeper than the upper leg, so the tractor rapidly gained speed.
Once the bend had been turned too late, Mozzesi realised his mistake. The tractor was out of control and he had no way of stopping it. About 50 metres down from the bend was a large dead tree just off the road.
As the bank sloped downwards, the Zeshi decided to aim for the tree, hoping it would bring the tractor to a stop. For some reason, the tractor just wouldn't go where he was trying to steer it, and he missed the tree just as well as it was travelling so fast by now that if it had hit the tree, there would have been serious damage and Mozesi might well have been killed. When he missed the tree, Ozzesi thought to himself, this is where I die.
And he shut his eyes and froze on the steering wheel. From that point, he made no attempt to direct the machine. It was about this time that I became aware of the drama unfolding up the hill.
I was standing on the main road below, near the shore of the bay, talking to Sakiusa, a senior teacher. We heard a series of thumps and crashes as the tractor careened down the road. The surface was rather stony and uneven.
And as the slasher moved over the ground, the stones caused it to start bouncing. It would leave the ground and then come crashing down several metres further on, only to bounce up again and repeat the action. The faster the tractor moved, the larger the bounces and crashes became.
As Sakiyusa and I looked to where the sounds were coming from, we were horrified at what we saw. The speeding tractor with its plunging slasher was bearing down the steep slope, travelling straight for Sakius house in which his wife was working. The house was near the bottom of the slope and just above it the road took a turn of about 45 degrees toward the bank to follow around the base of the ridge between the road and the house.
There was a small flat garden area before the bank fell away steeply to the house. Any vehicle coming down the road and failing to take the turn would cross the garden and land right on the house. And that was what the tractor appeared certain to do.
We stood frozen to the spot as this out of control monster bore down upon the house. We didn't have time to shout a warning to Sakuza's wife, and even if we had, there wasn't time for her to get out. The house was built with a light wooden frame and floor about 8 by 4 metres, with two small rooms.
The walls were of plaited bamboo and the roof was of light corrugated iron. It offered no protection at all and would be flattened by the weight of the tractor. The tractor came thundering down toward us and began to cross the flat garden area above the house.
Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, it turned sharply to the right toward the bank. This took it back across the road and with a final plunge it came to rest in the only spot down the whole ridge where the bank was not just a near vertical wall beside the road. At the point where the tractor dived across the road, there was a shallow basin like depression between the road and the bank, where the bank seemed to have receded from the road for four or five metres.
The final leap brought the tractor to a stop, still upright, with Mossesi still in the seat, though stunned and shaken and the engine still running. The sudden quiet after all the crashing and thundering roused Sakiusa and me from our inactivity and we ran up to where the tractor was sitting with the engine slowly turning over, making a ticking noise as the fan tipped the cowling on one side where it had been shaken out of place by the violent jolting of the plunge down the hillside. Mozzie climbed slowly from the seat, almost In a dream.
He was obviously dazed and didn't seem to know what he was doing. I reached over and pulled the stop control of the engine, putting an end to the ticking of the fan, and then turned attention to Mozzzi. After a while he seemed to regain his senses and bit by bit the story came out about the events leading to this near disaster.
When Mozzessi had settled down and it seemed clear that he had suffered no real injury, we inspected the tractor and slasher. Incredibly, the front end of the tractor appeared to have suffered only a shaking that had displaced the fan cowling a couple of centimetres. Bit of a push soon rectified that at the back.
The adjustable support for the right hand arm of the three point linkage had previously been broken and welded. And this weld had broken a few minutes in the workshop. This was repaired.
The slasher was undamaged. Despite the fact that the accident had been caused entirely by human error, partly negligence and partly lack of experience, there were definite signs that God had intervened to avert disaster. There appeared to be no physical reason for the tractor to change direction as it crossed that smooth, flat piece of ground above the house.
Mozasi certainly didn't steer it as he was sitting frozen to the wheel with his eyes shut, and there was no unevenness of the ground to cause it to turn. A woman would no doubt have been killed if it had gone straight ahead. And why did the tractor come to rest at the only place down the whole length of the road where it would not have smashed its nose against the bank, causing severe damage to the machine, an injury or worse to Mozesi? I believe that God sent an angel to take control of the situation, even though things happened so fast that I doubt anyone had time to ask God for help.
I'm certainly glad we have a God who is always there and who loves us and helps us, even when the trouble we get into is our own fault. You've been listening to our series you're not Alone, stories told by Alan Sonter that help us to know that God is always watching over us wherever we are. If you have any comments or questions, send an email to radioabianaustralia.org
or give us a call within Australia on 024-973-3456. May God bless you and remember you are not alone. You have been listening to a production of 3 ABN Australia radio.
Hello, my name is Dr. Kylie Smith. I'm an environmental educator.
Thank you so much for joining me today in this programme. I'm going to look briefly at the role of environmental factors in heart health. I will explore the rational basis for the Bible's teachings on the environment.
And I will look at how scientific research provides support for following God's plan. To look at the biblical ideal, we need to look right back at the beginning of our world, back to creation. We find the creation story in Genesis chapters one and two and.
And after God had created the world on the sixth day, we read about how God created people. So looking In Genesis chapter one, verses 26 to 28, we read, and God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him.
Male and female created he them. And God blessed them. And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
So here in Genesis chapter one and verses 26 to 28, we have an overall summary of how God created people. In chapter two, we're given more details about creation in general and God's creation of people. Looking in Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, we read, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
So we see here that God created people out of dust or dirt. And this shows us that there is a very close connection between people and nature in God's original creation. Where did God then place these people, this man that he made? And later on we read about how he made the first woman.
Where were they placed? If we have a look in verse eight, we see that the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And so we see from this that God placed people in a garden. And science is now revealing to us the benefits of the environment in which God placed people.
In fact, there is so much scientific evidence Today, I just want to speak briefly about a few health benefits that have been linked to natural environments. So, in 1877, one of my favourite authors wrote, it is restful to eye and mind to range over the scenes of nature, over forest, hill and valley, plain and river, enjoying the endless diversity of form and colour, and the beauty with which trees, shrubs and flowers are grouped in nature's garden, making it a picture of loveliness. So this quote points out that nature promotes relaxation and reduces distress.
It says right at the beginning of the quote, it is restful to eye and mind. There is a lot of peace to be found in nature. According to this author, this is very important because distress is a significant factor in health conditions, including heart health.
And today we are hearing a lot about how much negative stress there is in our lives, especially in Western society. So how does stress negatively impact our heart? Well, one way is through adrenaline. Stress releases adrenaline, which increases our heart rate, causes blood vessels to constrict, alters the viscosity or in other words, the thickness of our blood, as well as its clotting properties.
All of these factors drive up blood pressure, increasing the risk of heart disease or stroke. And so science is now showing that the rest scenes of nature can help to alleviate negative stress. What can nature do? How can it help us? Well, some of the things that help are the sounds of nature.
So flowing water and birdsong have been shown to have therapeutic benefits. Tree density and vegetated settings have been shown to elicit positive emotions. Outdoor experiences can impress calmness.
They can reinvigorate and rejuvenate the mind, body and spirit. They can promote feelings of safety, opportunity, connection and pleasure. Contact with nature has been shown to reduce anger, frustration and aggression.
And contact with nature also increases a sense of belonging and acceptance. So from this research that has been done, we see that nature in itself reduces distress. Now, activity in nature confers additional benefits.
We often hear about the benefits of walking for health, and if we can do that out in the fresh air, then it's going to obviously have health benefits that we can't obtain from working in a gym. And studies have been done specifically on gardening, and it has been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. So we have seen that contact with animals and plants has positive effects on health.
Unfortunately, though, the artificiality of the spaces in which we live has dramatically increased over the past several centuries, from approximately 1750, when the industrial Revolution began. And in highly artificial, beneficial environments, we not only lose the benefits of our contact with nature, but these things that promote health are often replaced by things that actively harm health. Again, from the same author, written in 1905, I quote, the noise and excitement and confusion of the cities, their constrained and artificial life are most wearisome and exactly exhausting.
The air, laden with smoke and dust, with poisonous gases and with germs of disease, is a peril to life. So let's have a look at some of these pollutants that can cause problems. And as I said, this quote was written in 1905.
So since 1905, there are obviously a lot more pollutants in our environment now than what they were then. We're just going to look at one example, particulate matter. So we're looking at environmental factors in heart health and we hear today a lot about cholesterol.
Now, while diet associated cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke, A review published in the Journal of thoracic disease in 2016 reached the conclusion that air pollution is now becoming an independent risk factor for cardiovascular illness and deaths. This review that was published in the Journal of Thoracic Disease looked at a number of different studies, and it concluded in part that many studies of various types suggest that particulate matter in air pollution is strongly associated with increased, increased cardiovascular disease, such as risk of heart attacks, irregular heartbeat, blood clots or blood vessel blockages leading to stroke, blood vessel dysfunction, high blood pressure and build up of fatty materials in blood vessels, or in other words, atherosclerosis. Particulate matter can contribute to cardiovascular disease either directly because of the toxins it contains, or indirectly, as it can physically injure body tissues, which increases inflammation.
So the signs of inflammation are redness, heat and swelling also that causes pain. Particulate matter can also lead to increased harmful free radicals in the body. And when there are more free radicals present than can be kept imbalanced by the antioxidants, the free radicals can start doing damage to fatty tissue, DNA and proteins in our bodies.
And so they can contribute, amongst other things, to atherosclerosis. Where do these pollutions come from? Well, there are multiple sources. Probably the biggest source is various forms of combustion.
So, of course, wood and products from trees can produce these pollutants. And so in late 2019 to early 2020, we've had terrible fires in eastern Australia. And the smoke from these bushfires reached unprecedented levels.
And this resulted in increased particulate matter and other pollutants in the air. And during this time, the air pollution levels in Sydney, Port Macquarie and other places reached hazardous levels. And for a number of days, many days, they were the worst in the world.
Significantly higher than other places well known for their air pollution, such as Beijing and Delhi. Okay, so it comes from combustion, from wood, from fires and things like that. Also the production and burning of fossil fuels, which is obviously an ongoing thing.
And so, for instance, in the Hunter Valley, the production and burning of fossil fuels has been linked to increased rates of cancer, heart, lung, liver and kidney disease, as well as birth defects throughout the region. Also, in order to make space to create mines and things like that, what we often do is to remove the vegetation. And when we do that, that means that we have a loss of what we call ecosystem services.
Ecosystem services are services provided by nature, such as the purification of air and water. And so because there is less vegetation to remove pollutants, the levels of pollutants obviously will be higher. So there are pollution pollutants in the environment today.
And these things have a negative impact on heart health. The other aspect of heart health that we've looked at is distress. And artificial environments have been linked to distress.
And so some examples of these are noise and the vibrations of machinery. Also damage to or loss of natural environments can lead to a disaster that has been called solastalgia. And this is described as the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.
So it's the distress of people as they see the environment in which they've been being destroyed, basically. And an example of this comes again from the Hunter, from the Upper Hunter. So persistent drought and large scale open cut mining in the Upper Hunter were both linked to solastalgia in a study published in Australian Psychiatry in 2009.
So from these we see that scientific evidence has clearly shown how displacement of species from their habitats has an adverse impact on their quality of life and development. We've just looked briefly at some of the poly pollutants in the environment, also at artificial environments and distress. It's so sad to see these things.
We can see from the biblical model of creation that we were designed to live in nature. And today these green spaces in which we were designed to live are rapidly diminishing. We need to treasure and cultivate what still remains.
How can we do this? I just want to mention three points today. The first point is to think about our reason for caring for the environment. I believe the first point in this is we need to recognise God's ownership.
In Psalm chapter 24, verse 1, it says, the earth is the Lord's and fullness thereof, and so God has created the world. It still belongs to Him. But he has entrusted to us a great responsibility.
He has entrusted to us a responsibility of being stewards and taking good care of the earth. So when we think about God's great love for us and what he has done for us, I think that can motivate us to see how important it is to care for things that he's made that show what he is like and that are important to Him. So then from this first point in thinking about how we recognise God's ownership, then the next point is naturally follows from that which is to follow God's plan.
And the Law of Ten Commandments, which can be summarised as taking to give, is really the law of life for the universe. And we're seeing that much of the environmental destruction in the world today is due to greed. It's due to neglect of God's law and neglect of understanding of God's character and how he has planned for us to care for the environment.
When we follow God's plan, that can help to care for the environment. And then the third point is, which is connected really to the second one, is to look for God's laws in nature and use to manage our environment. So, for instance, today we are violating many of the boundaries that God has placed in nature for our protection.
Levels of greenhouse gases, chemicals, disruption of the nitrogen cycle and so forth are global factors in environmental degradation. By doing things like reducing use of pesticides, choosing sustainable products and so forth, we can work to preserve God's creation. So God has entrusted the earth to our care.
Let's strive to be responsible stewards and show the blessings of obedience to his ways.
This programme has been brought to you by 3ABN Australia radio.
