In the news...

Sometimes it is hard not to feel grim about this world, and how badly we take care of it. Wikipedia has an In the News section on their front page. This is what it read this very morning..

• American businessman Bernard Madoff pleads guilty to the largest investment fraud in U.S. history.
• Cougar Helicopters Flight 91 ditches in the Atlantic Ocean near Newfoundland, Canada, killing 17 people.
• An oil spill in Australia's Coral Sea is reported as Queensland's worst environmental disaster (affected Sunshine Coast pictured).
• A school shooting kills at least 15 people in Winnenden, Germany, and another shooting spree kills at least 10 people in the U.S. state of Alabama.
• A suicide attack kills at least 28 people and injures 57 others in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Two British soldiers from the 38 Engineer Regiment are fatally shot in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Three shootings, one suicide attack, a crash, and two environmental disasters... Ironic perhaps, that the last item in the news is this...

• NASA launches the Kepler spacecraft, a mission to search for Earth-like planets.

Unless there is some sort of awareness that we are perhaps not doing a very good job at being stewards to this earth at being Ambassadors of Christ's reconciliation why would we look for other Earth-like plants.

It is not the case that I am currently in some kind of state of disillusion and unbelief at our failures. Reading these few news items serves more as a reminder of the enormous task, and our call or renewing - one step at a time.