Caring for God’s creation
A drama sketch written by Adrian and Lucy Thompson, JRI Associates
Scene. An easel with a clipboard canvas facing away from the audience. God is standing at the board with a paint brush and paintbox, delicately putting some final touches in.
Man enters and on seeing God painting, he goes to have a look.
Man: Wow God, that’s really brilliant. I love the way you’ve captured the sky, and those clouds. And those trees are fantastic, they must have taken you hours. And those birds, they are so colourful. You must have spent ages on this.
God: (smiling) Yes, a fair bit of time. I think its more or less finished now.
God stands back and smiles.
God: I have to admit I’m pretty pleased with it. I wasn’t sure about the slugs at first, but I found a lovely shade of grey for them, and the hedgehogs do so like them. Still not sure about that duck billed platypus though. Gabriel laughed for hours when he saw it.
Now listen Adam, I want you do me a favour. Can I leave my painting with you, so you can keep an eye on it. In fact you can even add a few useful things if you like, the odd farm, a few houses maybe, but give me a shout first, and I’ll give you a hand.
God leaves stage and man stands and looks at the painting.
Man: (thoughtfully) Yes, it is wonderful, God’s right though, it does need some houses, maybe even a town. I won’t bother him now about advice, I’m sure this painting thing isn’t as hard as it looks.
Man picks up paints and brush and starts dabbing at the canvas.
Man: Hmm, I’m not quite quite as good as God yet, but I’m sure with some practice.
Hums for a few seconds.
Man: The thing is, there are a lot of trees and I could do with some more towns and maybe some factories. I’ve got to get that essence of global economy into it.
Gets spray can out of back pocket.
Man: I’ll just spray out a few of these forests, woops, I didn’t mean to do those birds as well. Now, I can paint over that.
Paints again.for a second.
Man: Hmm not really what I wanted.
Man: I’ll just put another road in. Oh blast, there’s an oil slick in the middle of the sea where that paints dripped. Oh and the smoke from the factories smudged and the sky’s gone all grey and yukky.
Stands back
Man Oh help, I didn’t mean it to end up like this. Nearly all those lovely trees and animals have gone. God’s going to be really mad when he gets back and finds this mess.
Frantically takes a tissue and tries to clean some of the paint Off.
Man: Its dried, I can’t move it.
Gods enters back onto stage.
God: Hi Adam, how’s my painting.
Man hangs head.
Man: I’m really sorry God, I should have asked you for help when I tried to add a few things and its all gone pear shaped. I guess I’m a pretty lousy artist.
God looks at painting and slaps man on the back.
God: I see what you mean, but there’s still time to learn.
God gives man brush and starts to guide his hand across the painting.
Light dims and man takes painting off the easel and places it at the foot of the cross, where it can be seen to be a picture of the earth.