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Innovation, Work, and the New Energy

PentecostEnergy Security, Transition and the Common Good Week 30 · Day 3

Scripture References

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Old Testament

Psalm 104:24-30

²⁴ LORD, how many are your works! In wisdom, you have made them all. The earth is full of your riches.
²⁵ There is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals.
²⁶ There the ships go, and leviathan, whom you formed to play there.

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²⁷ These all wait for you, that you may give them their food in due season.
²⁸ You give to them; they gather. You open your hand; they are satisfied with good.
²⁹ You hide your face; they are troubled. You take away their breath; they die and return to the dust.
³⁰ You send out your Spirit and they are created. You renew the face of the ground.

New Testament

Romans 12:1-2

¹ Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
² Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.

Thought for the Day

Psalm 104 is a long, bright poem of delight. It looks at the world and sees not merely a mechanism, but a gift: springs, grass, trees, creatures, breath. When God gives, they gather; when he hides his face, they are dismayed; when he sends his Spirit, they are created. The psalmist is not naïve about dependence. He is grateful for it.

Paul urges the Roman church to offer their bodies as living sacrifices, and to be transformed rather than conformed. Worship is not only what we sing; it is what we become. Renewed minds lead to renewed life.

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Innovation and work in the energy transition can be a place of real service, and also of real temptation. We can trust technique as salvation, or we can despise ordinary labour as too slow. The psalm’s wonder is itself a kind of restraint. Scripture offers a different posture: wonder at creation, humility about our place within it, and a willingness to be changed. If our minds are renewed, our inventing may become less frantic, more neighbourly, more honest.

Lord, renew our minds. Let our work be worship: careful, truthful, and patient. Teach us to serve your world without pretending we own it.

Prayer Points

Respond

Renew the minds of those who invent and build, that their work is shaped by truth, humility, and love.
Protect workers and communities facing change and uncertainty; provide steady support and honest communication.
Guard innovation from pride and haste; teach patience, testing, and the courage to be corrected.

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Awaken gratitude for creation, and deliver us from treating the world as raw material for greed.
Form in the Church a hopeful realism: worship that leads to wise, neighbour-shaped action.

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