We possibly all remember iconic moments in television history, like the day the SAS stormed the Iranian embassy in London in May 1980 bringing to an end a hostage siege. I remember watching the news on the evening of Saturday 5th June 1993, the day that the Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough fell from it’s cliff top location down into the North Sea down below. The film clip was shown around the world and was particularly memorable as the late Richard Whiteley jumped as a chimney stack crashed into the sea in the middle of his piece to camera. We are no strangers in Suffolk to the continuing threat of the North Sea, the city of Dunwich on the Suffolk coast fell victim to storms and coastal erosion and during 1287 the city fell into the sea, the population, according to the 1086 Doomsday Book was around three thousand people, most of whom perished on that fateful night. We have seen the effects of coastal erosion along the east coast of this country for years.
A few years ago, when we were living in Norfolk I saw a computer generated picture of Norwich Castle, standing majestically as an island, surrounded by sea water, caused by the rising sea levels, perhaps it was because the picture had been tampered with, thanks to the wonder of modern technology, that it all seemed quite far fetched. During this year we have seen excessive flooding in Europe, parts of Australia and in the UK, caused by excessive rain fall and rising sea levels. One headline read “Floods of Biblical nature!”and of course we are reminded of the Flood in Genesis which wiped out the world, except for Noah and his family and a boat load of Animals.
We look back at stories of old, of a flood that raises so many questions today, was it a real event in the history of the world? Was all nature really re-established by one man, his family and a pair of every animal known to man? How big was the ark? And if we’re not careful, we see it as nothing more than a great story. I can look at the picture of whole swathes of Great Britain under water in computer generated pictures, do we just ignore them because they seem too far fetched, but it is a fact that sea levels are rising year on year, can it be stopped? Can we make a difference? As we have said for the last four weeks, the problem is far too big, if just one person tries to make a difference, but if that one person is multiplied several times over, or even hundreds, or thousands of times, we can turn things around. Please read our supporting information on week 5 of our Climate Crisis pages on our Website by visiting https://methodistic.org.uk/climate-action/
A prayer for this week:
Pray for those who live in areas threatened by loss of homes and livelihoods as sea levels rise, storms rage and fertile land is lost.