Blog Number One

So, the start of a new blog, and the ridiculous decision of what I should write about! (Who's your target audience? she asks, thinking back to Alevel English Language. Does it matter? Not really.)

I've been at home now with very little to do for what seems like an immeasureably long time - having had some incredibly exciting weeks away travelling (in South Africa, the Outer Hebrides, and a Salt&Light camp near Battle) - but these last few weeks (even month, perhaps) were optimistically put aside for working in, but the dire decline of the Christian Bookshop industry has sadly left my most reliable of holiday jobs somewhat unreliable. It's such a shame, because the shop is an amazing resource for so many people, and has been a fantastic place to work for the last four years (it really has been that long), but the ever increasing looming presence of the Amazons and Tescos of this world are overbearing, and they continue to steal the market and sell to it at prices that we could never match. But this story, perhaps, is one to be told at a later point. Nevertheless, much prayer is required in that area.

So without a large amount of paid work to be getting on with, I've had the chance to take some day trips (Kew Gardens being the prominent, with Mum), and catch up on the things of my head that have sat in the background for the majority of the year, and now have the chance to come to the front and be fully mulled over. 'God loves Darwin too', which was the only blog title I could scrape from the bottom of my creative barrel last night when I set it up, stems from thoughts I'd been having about Creation, influenced by the barrage of Darwin items in the media this year (including the new film based on his life out this week [http://creationthemovie.com] ), the small amount of holiday reading I decided to embark upon in advance of the 'Evolution & Systematics' compulsory module I'll read this year, and the three audio sermons on the subject of 'Creation' by Jeremy Blakey and Steve Jones that were drawn to my attention on the Oxford church's websites [http://www.occ.org.uk/oxford/resources/audio].

It's a subject that's been playing in my mind the whole year, since before I left to start the Biology degree, in fact, and has been constantly challenged and rechallenged as the year has gone on - by lecturers, friends, probing church pastors and, ultimately, myself. While the subject is massive, and I'm sure I could waffle on about it til the cows came home (which inevitably they eventually do, but they're renowned for being dirty stop outs), I won't right here and now, just for your sakes. But needless to say, there has been a lot going on in my head around the whole debate of whether 'Science & Religion' can ever be compatible, whether creation and evolution can co-exist as compatible theories and how it all fits together. I don't know anyone who's got it completely sussed, but there's been a massive settling in my spirit regarding the issue as I've learnt more and prayed more this year, so perhaps I'll do a proper blog about it all at a later stage (perhaps in a quiet week?).

Anyway, some good conclusions I did manage to come to were around the fact that however Darwin's ideas have been used to 'disprove' God in this neo-darwinian era of science, Darwin was not a man out to disprove God, and made that clear in his work.  God loved Darwin too, just as much as he loves me, you (whoever you might be) and the holiest and most pious people you know of. That's it. He loves Dawkins too, however atheistic he might be, and that's..well, funny, to me :D It doesn't matter how much they push God away, He always longs for them to come back.
Another thing that I've been thinking about, taken from Jeremy Blakey's talk on the People of God's creation, was the role of stewarding of the earth that was appointed to mankind by God - Jeremy puts it really well (much better than I'll be able to here!) how the earth is God's and we are here to look after, live in and love it ([http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2024&version=NIV](Psalm 24) &  [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%20115:16&version=NIV] (Psalm 116 v 16)) ...it put into context for me what my role is, and perhaps why I've fallen in love with animal biology, plants and ecology so much. I want to learn about the earth, maintain it and cherish it; I've realised that rather than being geeky, it's entirely unsurprising, as that's what God has made and called me to do.