Family of God Lutheran Church     ELCA

The novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley during the Year Without a Summer. The year 1816 was marked by record breaking cold and crop failures, which affected people throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Mary Shelley, her husband Percy, and Lord Byron were spending the summer in Geneva, Switzerland, and the weather was so cold they were forced to stay indoors much of the time. To pass the days, they decided to have a contest on who could write the scariest story, and Mary Shelley, at the age of 18 won with her work  Frankenstein. 

The Year Without a Summer is believed to have been caused by the tremendous eruption of the volcano Tambora in Indonesia the preceding year. The atmosphere was filled with volcanic dust which prevented the sun's rays from fully penetrating to the earth itself.

One of the thrills of summer at our house is to sit out on the deck in the evening and eat outside when the temperature is inthe upper 70's and the air is clear and sunny. We have not had that privilege much this year as our air quality has been so horrible owing to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. You might remember this happened some last year as well.

Why is the clear Canadian air being filled with smoke and fire particulates? Some say climate change. The abnormally warm and dry season results in many fires being started naturally by lightning in the Canadian forests. There are different opinions about climate change--but the question generally is not whether it is changing but what is the cause and what can be done about it. 

Of course the issue is clouded by economic and political concerns--some say this is a natural part of the earth's climate cycles, as in a volcanic eruption, while most scientists say it is part of the Greenhouse Effect where human burning of fossil fuels makes the atmosphere warmer and wetter, which has a significant role in our weather.

This is not the best place for such a discussion, but I would like to comment to those who believe climate change is not manmade--what if you are wrong? To not take measures to reduce our effect on the earth's atmosphere is to gamble with our children's and grandchildren's future. Is it really worth the risk of being incorrect, especially if the effect is irreversible damage?

The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were set in the Garden of Eden and could eat of any fruit in the Garden except the one on the tree in middle of the Garden. Of course that is the one of which they ate, and so sin came into the world. Before the fall, all the first man and woman had to do was to be caretakers of the garden and partake of its riches. But after the fall, the land into which they were driven had hard soil which meant back-breaking labor to make it produce food. 

One thing the story of Adam and Eve can teach us is that there is nothing new--the first people made mistakes which changed their carefree living into hard living. The earth was not as fruitful as it was in Eden because of their sin and short-sightedness. Today not much has changed--rainforests are being destroyed which limits the amount of oxygen put into our air, careless and cheap industrial methods destroy wilderness areas, the oceans are filled with plastic particles, the buffalo were butchered almost to extinction, and so the story goes on.

What irony that we people never seem to learn, and that our earth is threatened not by outer space aliens, but by its own inhabitants. 

It has been written that a true conservationist is "a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children." -- Audubon Society

God's creation of the earth is given to us as a gift and we are entrusted with preserving and protecting our galactic home.

Pr. Paul Burow