Millennium Green

Killing time while a pair of tyres were changed, I walked about Waterside Millennium Green, in Colne. This had once been the beating industrial heart of a Lancashire mill town. By the 1960s, the old mills were being demolished. There are few things uglier than a spent industrial site, but back in the mid-1990s, locals and councillors turned the spot into ‘an open community space to be used forever as an area for informal recreation play, leisure time occupations, a meeting area or for community events.’ Very pleasant it is, too. 

‘Open community space’ is often code for pieces of waste ground where the local pimps and pushers ply their respective trades. Thankfully, I found evidence of neither, but the above claim still raised a brow. The good burghers of Colne imagined that our need for ‘informal recreation play’ and ‘leisure time’ will be both desired and used for ever. Just as our Victorian forbears thought that manufacturing things would be done for ever, ignoring its ecological cost and health-destroying drudgery, so we are wont to believe that our love of pleasure will continue ad infinitum. The last 12 months alone have demonstrated the dubious solidity of that claim, with the Millenium Green’s online calendar bereft of all events. As the site has reverted to something of its natural state, despite the nineteenth century’s ever-expanding mass production, so our assumptions and expectations will prove just as short-lived and fleeting.

The only activities that will carry on forever are worshipping God, and ignoring God. The careless millions who live on our planet without considering their Creator will spend eternity in the same state -without Him. They who still meet to worship Him and enjoy His company and provision, will do so forever, even after their mortal bodies are long decayed. 

The Lord knows the days of the upright,

And their inheritance shall be forever.

They shall not be ashamed in the evil time,

And in the days of famine they shall be satisfied.

But the wicked shall perish;

And the enemies of the Lord,

Like the splendour of the meadows, shall vanish.

Into smoke they shall vanish away.

The wicked borrows and does not repay,

But the righteous shows mercy and gives.

For those blessed by Him shall inherit the earth,

But those cursed by Him shall be cut off.

Psalm 37 18-22