It rained last night! The roads were too wet for me to ride my bike. (This is something that I did not realize until I was dressed, had filled a water bottle, had topped off the air in the tires, and had walked the bike down the driveway, and actually looked at the road surface. Sigh …)
I was planning to ride my 17-mile exercise route around Queen’s Lake. I especially enjoy riding that route during the summer. That’s because there are only a third as many vehicles on the early-morning road, compared to fall, winter and spring. School is out, you see, and there is no traffic entering and exiting the two school’s parking lots that I ride past.
Why is there such a dramatic decrease in traffic during the summer? It’s because very little school traffic is composed of actual school buses. Nearly all of it is made up of a parent driving a child to school — a trip that is, of course, totally unecessary, because there is indeed school bus service.
I wonder how much gasoline is burned by such trips? (Certainly, there is much pollution, because a car pollutes the most during the first two miles it is driven.)
All of us who burn petroleum products bear responsibility for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The incessant demand for oil in our country, and the refusal to encourage the use of alternative-energy sources, is what drives more dangerous methods of drilling for oil, such as what BP attempted.
Cain’s question (Genesis 4:9) is, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s answer, of course, is “Yes!” Cain is under judgment.
In the same way, we are our pelican’s, and turtle’s, and fish’s keepers. We are all under judgment for their deaths in the Gulf of Mexico. Let us pray forgiveness, and for the healing of God’s creation.
