The members of the Eastern Region Environment Committee of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne have been busy little bees. To-day is World Environment Day and yesterday at church at St Thom’s at Upper Gully we received a handy little brochure on Water Saving. While Melbourne is not the driest part of the dry continent, its residents are quite water conscious and have constant reminders to vigilance so the Water Saving brochure was a contribution to the whole civic water saving ethos. The brochure explains to us as follows:
Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Most of Australia is classed as arid or semi-arid, with 80% of the continent receiving less than 600 millimetres, and 50% receiving less than 300 millimetres, per year.
Of all the water on Earth, only 3% is fresh. Less than a third of 1% is available to humans. The rest is frozen in glaciers, polar ice caps or deep within the Earth, beyond our reach.
Water is one of the most important natural resources we have. It is essential to our existence.
Since 1900, global water consumption has risen 10 fold. UNESCO has predicted that by 2020 water shortage will be a serious problem world wide.
As Christians, we are called to care for, and to share with all, the creation given by God. It is therefore a responsibility of the Church to show leadership in sustainable water management. Action is therefore being taken to raise the awareness of members of the Eastern Region of the Melbourne Anglican Diocese to this responsibility and to encourage an engagement in, and an acceptance of, the challenge concerning water usage by the Church itself and by Church members.
Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Most of Australia is classed as arid or semi-arid, with 80% of the continent receiving less than 600 millimetres, and 50% receiving less than 300 millimetres, per year.
Of all the water on Earth, only 3% is fresh. Less than a third of 1% is available to humans. The rest is frozen in glaciers, polar ice caps or deep within the Earth, beyond our reach.
Water is one of the most important natural resources we have. It is essential to our existence.
Since 1900, global water consumption has risen 10 fold. UNESCO has predicted that by 2020 water shortage will be a serious problem world wide.
As Christians, we are called to care for, and to share with all, the creation given by God. It is therefore a responsibility of the Church to show leadership in sustainable water management. Action is therefore being taken to raise the awareness of members of the Eastern Region of the Melbourne Anglican Diocese to this responsibility and to encourage an engagement in, and an acceptance of, the challenge concerning water usage by the Church itself and by Church members.
REFLECTION
As a people of faith we have before us the Great Commandment,
“To love God, to love neighbour and to love self”.
The environment is our neighbour, sustaining us, nurturing us and teaching us about ourselves and about that which is different to ourselves.
The land, the water, the air, all that is vegetable and all that is animal and mineral become very intimate neighbours calling each of us to learn more about how we relate to them.
The commandment calls us into a relationship with our living world.
The commandment calls us into a relationship with our living world.
We mutually receive and have reciprocal responsibilities back to all aspects of the Earth’s created order.
We have been offered a time to heal both ourselves and our environment by using this received and share knowledge, we are enabled to hand on our wisdom to those generations yet to be born and also to honour all those who have made this journey before us.
Loving God we thank you for this world of wonder and delight.
You have given it to us to care for, so that all your creatures may enjoy its bounty.
We have been offered a time to heal both ourselves and our environment by using this received and share knowledge, we are enabled to hand on our wisdom to those generations yet to be born and also to honour all those who have made this journey before us.
Loving God we thank you for this world of wonder and delight.
You have given it to us to care for, so that all your creatures may enjoy its bounty.
