GETTING TO THE POINT

GETTING TO THE POINT

Winnipeg, Manitoba might be described as a point at the centre of a circle on account of its being in “big sky country.” My wife and I began raising our family there. The summers were as beautiful and brief as the winters harsh and lingering. Snow, like scouring powder, came annually to scrub the prairies from October to April.

In fall the big sky was a noisy freeway of honking horns as convoys of Canada goose headed south. Their mass evacuation above brought chills of foreboding to my soul. Time to make ready for a long cold winter! Come winter the big blue-yonder was bird-less. A sky-jet would on occasion pierce the minus forty-degree air to the tune of newspaper slowly torn. Ice-dust hanging in the air would cause the horizon-hugging sun to walk with a friend on either side. The natives called these reflected images “sun dogs.” Me? The threesome was the Santa Maria with the Nina and Pinta about to dock in the New World. But for all that, at least for me, the point got lost every winter; buried with me under the snowdrift.

Our forebears had been settling this point of the compass since the Highland Clearances. Dorothy and I had merely been delayed. In the course of our time there, we naturally made many friends among the many Scots who dwell there. Why Winnipeg? Why not? When God created us He told us to “fill the earth and subdue it” Genesis 1:28. Sure, the pin was stuck in the map for a while at Babel, where humanity massed in a concerted attempt to jab the blue with a high tower. But the LORD came down and confused their language, that they might not understand one another’s speech, and scattered them abroad from there, over the face of all the earth (Gen. 11). God, therefore, would have the point include the whole planet.

To fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish, birds, cattle, creeping things etc., is a major cultural endeavour: the Cultural Mandate (Gen. 1:26-28). Therefore God has commissioned us to settle the entire planet by making wise use of, and carefully utilizing and managing, its resources. We are to be ever mindful of the earth’s Owner. For the LORD says, “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool…” Isaiah 66:1a; Acts 7:49a.

Isaiah also says the LORD “…sits above the circle of the earth.” Isaiah 40:22. And Job says the LORD “…hangs the earth on nothing” Job 26:7b. Therefore the earth itself is the point at the centre of the circle. Like a ballpoint pen on paper God is using the spinning-earth to write in the blue: Skywriting on a grand scale!

As we go about the God-ordained business of filling the earth and subduing it let’s do so with the bigger picture and the greater glory of the Triune God in mind.