What a wonderful world we live in – the sheer beauty all around us and the variety of colour, fauna, types of animals, birds and sea creatures, the heavenly lights, let alone the unique individual humans that strut the planet and have gone before us. I love Louis Armstrong’s song, ‘What a Wonderful World’ – one of my favourites but sadly we are destroying so easily the beautiful habitats that God made for us to enjoy.

Our children can enjoy the big outdoors whether it is at the seaside or in the country or looking at it from a plane or at home in their native environment. The little things of creation often excite them like ladybirds or a beetle or a tiny flower stuck in a wall, a special looking stone and we, as adults, do well to emulate their simplicity and enthusiasm for life in all its fulness and abundance.

God has promised that the seasons and days and nights will be preserved in His pattern and God’s order will continue as He asks of us to simply caretake His world (see the early chapters of Genesis in the Bible). The even greater wonder is that God broke into history by sending Jesus to our planet – our only hope for things to be righted providing forgiveness for our sinfulness; healing for our sicknesses; and giving us the freedom to change as He works in our lives as we invite Him to.

‘God’s World’ happens to be the title of one of our books for reading to 3-4 year olds in ‘The Creation Series’. It sets the scene for little ones to see how ordered God is and shows so beautifully the many things He has made. Believe it or not, the crown of His creation is the human race and He delights in loving each one of us in the best ways possible. How He loves each child conceived and how He looks forward to their birth just like earthly parents do although of course some babies don’t get a chance to be born as sometimes the selfishness of adults can make it inconvenient to birth a child.

God’s world seems unpredictable because of the impulses of leaders and groups of people who decide to do things their own way rather than following the blueprint that God has set out in the Bible. The latter really is the most amazing book in the whole world telling of real heroes and heroines (the greatest of all being ‘Jesus’!) showing how human nature doesn’t change through the centuries and giving the answers to life as it was intended to be lived. Let’s get reading more of the Bible so that we can connect with the Creator who alone can get His world to work better for our children and grandchildren as we adults make those right choices.