What does Lent mean to you?
Does it mean forty days of chocolate deprivation with the attendant shakes whenever you stand next to racks of Dairy Milk, Galaxy and Mars bars at the supermarket check-out?
Maybe you come out in a hot sweat when the smell of a balti wafts your way because you’ve promised to turn away from take-aways.
Or perhaps your commitment to ditch the odd drink suffers a wobble when you hear the uncorking of a bottle of wine.
`Giving up something’ was the most common response when people were questioned in a new Tearfund survey on what they knew about lent.
And it seems a good number of the 7,000 people questioned would make a sacrifice for the sake of the planet.
When asked if they would give something up to save energy and reduce climate change, three out of five said they would be prepared to make at least one lifestyle alteration.
The four things people were most prepared to give up were
- throwing rubbish away that could be recycled
- using ordinary light bulbs instead of energy-saving ones
- leaving electrical devices on standby
- boiling more water in the kettle than they actually need
Small acorns
Small acts they may be but when tens of thousands do them, they deliver a beneficial impact.
And don’t think you will be making your sacrifice with a small band of diehard bobble hat-wearing tree huggers.
Take a look at our Carbon Map to see how many others share our passion for this Carbon Fast mission and the world they live in.
Forget selfish self-interest, there’s another good reason why we should care about climate change and its impact around the world.
All together now
It affects us all but poor people are often hit the hardest.
The Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev. James Jones said, `It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change. To carry on regardless of their plight is to fly in the face of Christian teaching.
`The tragedy is that those with the power to do something about it are least affected, whilst those who are most affected are powerless to bring about change.
`There’s a moral imperative on those of us who emit more than our fair share of carbon to rein in our consumption.’
We are all neighbours with a problem in common and we know that Jesus is clear about how we should relate to each other: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ He says in Matthew 19:19.
Those of us living in the affluent West have so many resources too literally at our disposal. We have been blessed with choices and freedoms but they come with responsibility.
‘Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good but the good of others,’ says 1 Corinthians 10:23.
We all know it but often forget it – we are stewards, not owners of the Earth.
‘The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,’ says Psalm 24:1.
Possibly an inconvenient truth but definitely a vital one. Are the world’s changing weather patterns reminding us of it?