Managing the very things in life that can both create and destroy

The King’s Centre is located in a pretty amazing setting, right alongside the River Thames in the heart of Osney in Oxford. The Thames footpath, which runs behind our building, leads to the Botley Road in one direction, and Folly Bridge in the other.

It was during a lunch break last week that I took that path and wandered over to Osney Lock, a favourite spot of mine, where I just love watching the boats rise and fall as the friendly local lock-keepers do their work.

As I walked over there, two things caught my attention: the first was a half-sunken boat, all but destroyed by the rising floodwaters of the Thames earlier this year; the second, just round the corner from it, was the new Osney Lock Hydro.

As I looked at these two things I couldn’t help but think of how the very things in life that can create can also be the very things that destroy.

Water is, in itself, something utterly neutral; but it wasn’t neutral to the poor owner of that boat.

The falling rain and the rising river had gradually taken its toll until it could cope no longer, leaving it to sink where it was and later to be removed by the Environment Agency to its present resting place, with the owner under instruction to repair and remove it or else it will be crushed.

But just metres away from that water-stricken boat, the very same water is about to do something very, very different: it is going to operate Oxfordshire’s own first hydro-electricity micro-generator (and having spent last year in British Columbia in Vancouver I’ve seen first-hand how cheap power can be generated from water – though admittedly they have rather a lot more of it over there). It’s very old technology in many ways – a simple reverse Archimedean screw – but one that will provide a modern utility in a thoroughly green way through the initiative of local residents. Good on them. And it’s all operated simply by the flow of water – the same water that destroyed the boat that wallows round the corner.

In one case the water destroyed; in the other, it will create.. And that’s just like so much of life. So many things in life that bring joy can, if not handled correctly or if abused, bring havoc. Love, that inspires selfless sacrifice and generosity can, if not controlled, lead to anger and jealousy; the beer that refreshes our thirst can, if drunk to excess, cause chaos on the streets on a Saturday night.

Most things in this world are neither good nor evil in themselves; it’s how we use them, or how we respond to them, that makes the difference.

And that comes down to the choices we make. But even when we’ve made a bad choice – and few of us don’t at some point – that’s when it’s good to remember that God is an expert at not only forgiving us, but working with us to undo the mess we’ve got ourselves into.

One of my favourite Bible verses comes from the prophet Joel, where God promises to ‘restore what the locust has eaten’. At one level that seems impossible; after all, when the locust has eaten the crop, it’s gone. But this is a powerful picture of just how much God can turn things around – so that even when the neutral has become bad, if we put it into God’s hands it can be turned round to good. He says we only have to ask.