"God can recycle anything": Dave Bookless(Photo: © CMS)Recycle all the mess of life – not just cardboard and plastic – says a new book by CMS mission partner Dave Bookless
God can redeem and recycle anything that we consider waste.
That’s the bold claim of Dave Bookless, a CMS mission partner and leading Christian environmentalist, in a new book just published.
Dave doesn’t just mean literal waste, as you might expect from a green campaigner, but the ‘senseless waste’ of suffering and personal tragedy.
“Over the years we’ve struggled with the same problems others face – long-term illness, unanswered prayer, depression, miscarriage, bereavement and more,” he explains.
“What we’ve found is that, although God never sends bad things, God is often most intensely and powerfully present in such situations, and able to transform us as well as our circumstances.”
The book, God Doesn’t Do Waste, tells the story of how one ordinary family, the ‘Bookless bunch’, went green but doesn’t stop there. It takes in all the waste and mess of human existence and is honest about the struggles that go with it.
“In some ways it’s simply a missionary autobiography – it’s about how God has led my wife and I to where we are and what we’re doing,” says Dave, who is the director of A Rocha UK, a Christian charity promoting care for creation.
He says he wrote God Doesn’t Do Waste for people who would never read a book of theology. Great news for most readers.
“That includes Christian friends who don’t think of themselves as ‘green’ or ‘environmental’ and my non-Christian and other-faith friends who are intrigued by why I ‘gave up a good job’ as a vicar in order to start an environmental charity.”
Nonetheless it is a deeply spiritual book and a book with a mission, says Dave.
“I hope it will help people understand more of God’s passion for the whole
of creation, and for us as part of it – and that it will also help those who – like us – have struggled with illness, disappointment and despair, as it shows how God can transform even the toughest situations when we offer them back to him.”
God Doesn’t Do Waste is published by IVP and you can buy it direct from the CMS shop: www.cms-shop.org.uk