Editorial June 29, 2015 Issue

Building with divine energy

Margaret Rogers

As world population grows and living standards rise, so do more buildings. Buildings consume a lot of energy to light, heat, and cool. But today’s knowledge allows that buildings can not only consume, but actually project energy in a useful way. Sunlight shines on them, wind flows around them. Buildings constructed with the right materials and design can capture energy from these renewable sources to power themselves and give back extra to a common grid to share with others.

Discoveries like this point to a hopeful conclusion: What’s been accepted as a law of depletion—energy used decreases available supply—can give place to a law of sustainability and even increase.

This has energizing implications for progressive building of other kinds, even of the individual and church body. Speaking of a purely spiritual kind of building, St. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: “For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building” (I Corinthians 3:9).

Send a comment to the editors

This is the end of the issue. Ready to explore further?

Online features Audio