While watching the news and weather on television over the weekend, I became aware that one of our great cities in the Southeast is in trouble.  That city is my hometown and place of birth, Atlanta, Georgia.  The problem?  Water shortage.  That's right.  I am having to re-adjust my thinking on this one, for water shortages have been much more common in another Southeastern city in which I have lived.  In fact, I graduated from high school there, and my mother and two brothers and families live there.  It is Tampa, Florida.  I guess Florida still has issues with water, but right now Atlanta really has issues.  This metropolitan area of some 5 million people may soon be on water rationing.  Atlanta's problems are part of a trend which is Southeast-wide.  The drought has many states and cities and towns in its grasp.  What is going on here?

Are we back to the question of cycles of nature vs. damaged environment again?  Does this mean that we will be arguing about what has happened, why, and what to do about it?  Is politics involved, as is so obvious to me with regard to Al Gore and his work whether you are for him or against him?  I think that many of us lay people believe that something is going on in the environment which represents a change from what we have experienced previously.  We do not know whether these ferocious storms, devastating tsunamis, flooding in some areas and drought in others, shifting of "tornado alley" eastward in the US are simply a part of a cycle of nature to which we adjust and stay calm or whether the environment is "injured" or "wounded" and is striking back.  You know, the old "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" thing?

Back a year or so ago there was a program on the weather channel, I think, about wildfires.  Wherever they break out, we are tempted to say that they are devastating.  And they are, especially when they destroy property and take lives.  The comment was made, however, that wildfires sometimes are nature's way of cutting back underbrush which may have gotten out of control and then allowing nature to recover or to begin again in this place.  I don't know about that.  I am not enough of a scientist to be able to say one way or another, but I am concerned about the environment.  I think many of us are.

We want the air to be clean enough to breathe safely, but the pollution index in so many of the great cities of the world is unacceptable.  We want the water to be clean enough to drink, but the fresh water supplies, many of them, are polluted.  We install filters on our faucets at home or we drink bottled water rather than water from the tap.  We want vegetables and meat from the vegatable garden or from our cow pastures and pig pens, but they are polluted, also with toxic chemicals which we use on the soil in various places.

Well, what about it?  Should we just wait on the cycles to come around again, or should we heed at least some of the environmentalists' pleas?  I really think this should be a bi-partisan issue which concerns all of us.  We should work together to be good stewards of this planet which God has bequeathed to us.   The word stewardship may make us pause for a moment.  Have we been good stewards of the earth?  Could we do better?  I think we could.  Do we have the capability to devise ways to clean up the environment?  Without a doubt.  Do we have the will to do it?  That's very much up in the air right now.  If we do what is right for the earth, we may help to preserve it for our grandchildren and future generations.