Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

One of the newspapers in Britain had headlines splashed across its website outlining the threat of a trade war between Canada and the European Union over the EU's threats to declare the controversial Canadian oil sands to be "highly polluting".

If it's any consolation, the exploitation of this resource in northern Alberta is the cause of no end of heated conversations even amongst Canadians at home. The benefit of extra oil may not be worth the damage to the surrounding environment.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. Folks may joke with each other about giving up chocolate or cutting down to ten cigarettes a day, but the whole issue of what we consume – as individuals and as nations - and what we restrain ourselves from consuming is deadly serious.

From a very early period in the history of the Church, ordinary people have undertaken a time-limited task of examining what they really need to live on. At times, the exercise becomes a spectacle of controlled starvation and self-hatred. There are, however, beneficial lessons to be learned from what Christians have been doing from the very beginning.

What we require – rather than being a fixed thing – is exceptionally fluid. It changes over time – usually in the direction of greater and ever-more-expanding budgets and waistlines. It can however, through reflection and restraint, be curbed. We have that power.

Our appetites increase, in part, because of laziness, fear and lack of restraint.

We find ourselves eating, drinking, burning and consuming ever more resources, and then making accommodations for that bigger and needier person, that hungrier society – needing to devote more and more energy to finding more money or more oil and also more time – time that could be used creatively elsewhere. We are addicted to an ever growing struggle.

Restraint is possible- for ourselves in our personal budgets and for our nations.