What a load of rubbish!
Audio here.
Good
morning and welcome to Thought for the Day.
Beachcomber
Ryan Stalker from Weymouth, (click for pictures) had a bit of a surprise the other day when
walking along the seafront at Osmington Mills on the Dorset Coast.
He saw
some rubbish washed up on the beach. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But on further
inspection the big plastic item turned out to be an intact wheelie bin. Yes
like our beloved HDC wheelie bins that line our street on a Monday and Tuesday
(depending on where you live), a whole wheelie bin had washed up on the Dorset
shore.
But this
particular wheelie bin turned out to have come all the way across the Atlantic
from Alabama in the United States. Once this hit social media, Americans went
wild, and managed to track the item by its bar code to one of three particular
missing wheelie bins. And this one went missing in Hurricane Sally in September
2020.
So the barnacle
encrusted wheelie bin had travelled over 4000 miles in nearly 6 years. Talk about
a load of rubbish!
It’s pretty tragic how much plastic micro and macro ends up in the sea. The human race aren’t the best at looking after our planet.
The
environment has rightly been the focus of a lot of interest in recent years as
we begin to take seriously the impact that we have had on the planet, and
Christians have a particular concern for the environment because we believe
that God has put us as the human race made in his image here to take care of
the it.
But while
Christians see it as a big issue, we can never see the environment as the ultimate
issue.
First of
all, we believe that God is making all things new, as it says in the final book
of the Bible- the book of revelation. His son Jesus makes us a new creation
when we trust in him, and he’s renewing this world to be a new creation when
Jesus returns. But also, the more important issue is how we treat our fellow
humans, and the God who made us.
Well
whether you come across a wheelie bin in the ocean, or plastic washed up on the
floods from the River Ouse, we all have a role to look after the planet that we
call home, but don’t do this because it’s the only thing that matters, but because
there is a God who cares. Because if he cares for us, we should care for one
another, and for the world he’s given us.
Thanks
for listening.