INNISFAIL AND BABINDA

Excerpted from my From Mason To Minister

Innisfail and Babinda

I think I was in my second year at college when I was posted to a place called Innisfail in far north Queensland for three month’s summer relief work. I was to look after the Presbyterian churches at Innisfail and also Babinda, a much smaller town north of Innisfail. We drove north the 1,600 kilometres from Brisbane to Innisfail (which is about 100 kilometres south of Cairns, Babinda being about 60).

My family lapped up the tropical weather. My mother-in-law, Margaret Notini, came up by train to visit. She loved it too. We were able to spend some free time at the beach, swimming in the Pacific. The downside were the “stingers” in the water - which were mostly bluebottle jellyfish. However, the local council erected large nets in an effort to protect swimmers.

As I floated peacefully in the water admiring the bright and pleasant surroundings, I couldn’t help but think how wonderful is the Creator of all these things: glimmering sandy beaches, palm trees, and the turquoise ocean. Isn’t this the earthly “utopia” I had wished for when I was shovelling snow back in “Winterpeg,” Manitoba? I suppose splashing Pacific water on myself was one way of keeping cool under the glow of a glorious tropical sun! The sparkling beach sand was bleached white, and mango trees - branches breaking under the weight of their fat, juicy fruit - were more plentiful than palm trees!

At theological college, I had learned that although God reveals Himself through the things He has made -such as the enticing tropical scene I was viewing through my cheap sunglasses - the spectacles of His written Word are needed for us to see Him properly. John Calvin, likening the Bible to eyeglasses, is saying that everything about God remains fuzzy without the aid of God’s Word to clarify truth.

As I lapped up the good life on my summer break in far-north Queensland, I wondered if what I was seeing was anything like the Paradise of old. Mind you, when Adam ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, he sinned against God. And the Bible says that sin is the transgression of God’s Law (summarized in the Ten Commandments). But it’s a comforting thing to know that when God made us, He engraved His Commandments in positive form upon our hearts. For this means that each of us, in our own conscience, knows that it is wrong to steal, commit adultery, lie, etc.

Viewed through the “glasses” of God’s Word, the golden sands, palm trees, and turquoise ocean reveal something of the beauty of the Creator reflected in His creation. The bluebottle jellyfish? They remind us that something is not quite right with our present “paradise.” Why do these stingers have to spoil a pleasant day at the beach? If we ask this question, we have to go all the way and ask why death has to spoil life for us? Why is there pain, suffering, and death in creation?

In my studies, I learned that the Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death. This means that Adam’s sin - and our own sinful disposition which is inborn in each of us - accounts for the sin and misery we see in the world around us. Pain, suffering, and death do not reflect the nature of God, rather they reflect the consequences of our fallen nature, which is part of God’s judgment upon our sin. God created mankind perfect and placed us in a perfect Paradise in the beginning, but like starlings fouling their own nests, so we (in Adam) destroyed our own habitat. But worse than this, according to the Bible, we also destroyed ourselves.

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