Things That Keep Us Up

Our family recently returned from a trip to Maryland, and subsequently missed worship this Sunday. Since we were not here, I don't have a Sermon Capsule for you. Instead I'm posting a segment that I hope becomes a staple on this blog. It's entitled "Things that Keep Us Up" and it will focus on those issues/questions/worries that keep us up at night.

This week we'll deal with the ever increasing price of gasoline at the pumps. This is a hot topic for just about everyone, and my guess is that many of you spend much more time thinking about gas prices than you did even 5 short years ago. If you click on this link you will find a story dated February 10, 2003, where the author talks about gas prices skyrocketing to $1.60/gallon in the US! I bet most of you would welcome such prices now. I paid $4.15 this morning at Blue Ox in Oxford!

So what can we do about ever increasing gas prices? Well, as I see it, we have a few options, starting with complaining. That's right, you can complain and gripe to anyone who will listen. You'll either make yourself feel remotely better, or get yourself more worked up, but either way you won't really do anything to change the situation. The second option is you can try and come up with some sort of scheme to get around the gas prices. I've read many such plans, and even concocted a few myself. This option will almost certainly consume a great deal of your time, potentially get you into trouble with the law, and almost certainly not actually provide a viable solution to your problem. The third option, one that I'm suggesting, is to put things in perspective. Did you know that our neighbors to the north (Canada) pay on average roughly $5.00/gallon (link). If you think that's bad, check out this article (link) that reports people in Japan paying roughly $6.00/gallon and Europeans paying anywhere from $7.00-$10.00/gallon!* Basically by putting the whole thing in perspective, we can realize that we really don't have it nearly as bad as we think we do, and maybe instead of complaining or scheming we can begin to see the positives in these increased fuel prices.

You did read that correctly, I mentioned positives to high fuel prices. Just to name a few:
1)Higher fuel prices are forcing manufacturers to begin to look at alternative technologies that will in the long run be better for everyone (ie cleaner, cheaper, reuseable).
2)Higher fuel prices can encourage us to walk more places, or even ride bicycles to save money and get into better physical shape.
3)Higher fuel prices bring about an increased awareness of just how spoiled and wasteful we as Americans are in our thinking that somehow we have a right to drive cars, get cheap fuel, and complain if we are in anyway denied these things or inconvenienced.

I figure prices at the pumps will still weigh heavily on your minds, and that almost certainly many of us will still complain, but hopefully we'll all be reminded that it could be worse, and if we really don't like it, we can stop driving. Or maybe you've come up with the perfect fool-proof scheme to getting cheap fuel...if so let me know!

Matthew 6:25-34

*(All figures are US dollar equivalents)