I’m having a bad sore throat these days, and tickle in my throat makes me dry-coughing frequently. I took some medicine, but it didn’t work. The doctor said that it was caused by air pollution. Indeed, recently smog is heavy in our area. The air sometimes is pervaded by a smell of unpleasant scorching, and in the streets you can see people wearing masks everywhere. For some days, due to the smog, the Air Quality Index reached more than 300, and the harmful smog was already a great threat to people’s health. For this reason, some primary and secondary schools were compelled to suspend classes, and some flights were also cancelled because of low visibility. There were two times when I was walking with my husband in the street, and he joked with me, “Look, it’s going to snow.” Current weather in this area is the same as the snowy days in northern China—there are seldom sunny days and even if there are, the sky then is still gray. It has lasted for more than one month. Who would imagine that this country, usually renowned for its beautiful environment, should have become a “city of fog”? According to the news reports, the main reason is that a certain neighboring country was burning rainforest constantly to cultivate virgin soil and plant palm trees. Such activity resulted in a conflagration that was difficult to put out, which thereafter produced a lot of smoke that permeated into neighboring countries and thus brought severe air pollution to these countries.
Sometimes when I look up at the gray sky, I feel an inexplicable dread and suffocation. In retrospect, whenever I was low in mood, if I gazed up into the blue sky watching the white clouds swimming gracefully with the breeze and then looked at the lush green trees and colorful flowers overflowing with vigor, my mood would rise immediately, and in them I also beheld that all that the Creator bestowed upon us to enjoy was so wonderful. But nowadays, with the smog shrouding the city, it’s an extravagant hope to see a bright blue sky. When will such smog end? While expecting that the smog will dissipate earlier, I’m pondering constantly: “What makes us suffer from such air pollution? Whose fault is it for such a situation? Is burning forests really a low-cost means to cultivate virgin soil? Do countries develop economies by wantonly reclaiming land really for the well-beings of the people?” It reminds me of God’s words, “As the miraculous deeds of God manifested themselves, this world swelled, piece by piece, with all of the things created by God, and it changed from chaos and darkness into clarity and brightness, from deathly stillness to liveliness and limitless vitality. Among all things of creation, from the great to the small, from the small to the microscopic, there was none which was not created by the authority and power of the Creator, and there was a unique and inherent necessity and value to the existence of each creature. Regardless of the differences in their shape and structure, they had but to be made by the Creator to exist under the authority of the Creator.” “Maybe you are a president, or a scientist, a pastor, or an elder, but no matter how high your office, if you rely on your knowledge and ability in your undertakings, then you shall always be a failure, and shall always be bereft of the blessings of God, because God accepts nothing that you do, and He does not grant that your career is a righteous one, or accept that you are working for the benefit of mankind. He will say that everything you do, is to use the knowledge and strength of mankind to divest man of the protection of God, and to deny the blessings of God. He will say that you are leading mankind towards darkness, towards death, and towards the start of an existence without limits in which man has lost God and His blessing.” From God’s words, we see that God created all things and governs and controls everything, and that all things came into being and stood fast because of the words of God. Regardless of whether they were mountains, plants, seas, rivers, or lakes, whether they were in the water or of the skies, from the great to the small, from the small to the microscopic—at the advent of every thing, God set forth the bounds for its existence and bestowed upon it the value and function in its existence. For example, various fishes in seas, rivers, and lakes are for man to eat; plants can absorb the hazardous substances in the air and produce oxygen, which provides a beautiful environment for man’s existence; large-area forests can prevent water loss and soil erosion. Nowadays, however, for the purpose of seeking selfish interests, people actually cut down and burn forests wantonly by human capability under the banner of working for the benefit of mankind. It seriously destroys the law that God set forth for all things, which brings about the issue of ecological imbalance and makes environment go from bad to worse and various natural disasters such as air pollution, water pollution, flood, and drought occur frequently. The occurrences of these disasters are constantly warning us: Away from God, and relying on our own knowledge and ability in our undertakings, finally we will become the victim of our own evil deeds and head for death step by step. Take recent smog for example. People hold that the economic value brought by planting palms through land reclamation overweighs the value of the forests. Thus, they don’t hesitate to burn forests to open up land. But what’s the consequence? Thick smoke not only endangers the health of local residents but also the health of people in the neighboring countries. If man only cares about the present commercial benefit but does not give any thought to others’ health and lives, even less to the interests of their posterity, do they win or lose? It speaks for itself. If they still continue like that, which direction will mankind move?
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