Renewable
Resources within ourselves
by Brian Radcliffe
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To encourage us to consider how we might utilize our personal assets in this new year.
Preparation and materials
- None required.
Assembly
- A happy new year to each one of you. I’d like us to begin this new school year by thinking about renewables. How many forms of renewable energy can you think of?
Listen to a range of responses. - Let’s go through the list.
- There’s wind power, which involves using huge turbines on land and off-shore.
- There’s solar power, where heat is captured from the sun through domestic and large-scale solar panels.
- There’s wave power and tidal power, where the sea is used to power turbines.
- There’s hydro-electric power, which relies on the flow of water due to gravity.
- There’s hydrogen production, which is done by splitting water molecules.
- There’s biomass energy and anaerobic digestion.
- There’s geothermal power, which uses heat from below the Earth’s surface. It is particularly suited to countries such as New Zealand and Iceland, where volcanic activity is present.
- Wood is also a type of renewable energy because trees can be grown to replace those burned. - Renewables: they’re infinite energy resources that quickly replenish themselves and can be used again and again, such as the wind, the sun and the waves. We know that we can keep using them indefinitely, unlike fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, which will eventually run out.
- There is renewal in other elements of our lives too. We renew a subscription to an app. We renew the contract on our mobile. We can renew a friendship with someone we’ve not seen for a while. We can renew the equipment that we use for a hobby. There’s much that we’re happy to renew.
- The advantage of renewing is that we know that the resource already meets our needs. We trust it because we’ve been using it for a while. It’s more of what we already have. We don’t renew what has let us down in the past, what has failed to provide what we need. Renewal provides a new batch that’s ready for the future.
Time for reflection
This is a new year, so there’s a lot of talk about new year’s resolutions, about using this as a time for change. Instead, I want us to think about renewables.
Let’s start with what we have. What is there about ourselves that we are satisfied with? It could be physical aspects, social skills, intellectual skills, appearance or personality. Even those of us who lack self-confidence will be able to pick out some aspects of ourselves. These are like the renewable energy sources of the sun, the wind and the waves. They’re part of us, something to be proud of, something that’s likely to be with us for the coming year.
Let’s begin this new year by celebrating who we really are. Let’s begin with a measure of confidence in ourselves.
Next, let’s imagine how we can harness those aspects of ourselves to energize our lives in the next few days, weeks and months. What are the opportunities that lie ahead? What are the unexplored directions that we might follow? What are the priorities that we can choose? Previously, we might have felt a little nervous about them, but now we’ve recognized that we have resources to explore. The sun will keep on shining, the wind will keep on blowing and the water will keep on flowing because they’re part of us all the time. That’s what’s great about renewables.
But maybe we have some doubts. We might be recovering from a bad time. We may feel that our resources are running low. The sun’s not shining brightly for us; the air is still, with barely a breeze; there’s a dry spell that means water is running low. Christians believe that Jesus can ‘make all things new’ (Revelation 21.5). He turns the unsatisfactory to satisfactory, the bad to good, the pessimistic to optimistic, the weakness to strength. That means that he can take what we have and turn it into a new future for us. He introduces renewables into our lives.
So, let’s get going with this new year, not expecting brand-new resources to appear by magic. Instead, let’s deploy what we already have and will continue to have. Here’s a renewable resource to start off with.
Song/music
‘Walking on sunshine’ by Katrina and the Waves, available at: https://youtu.be/iPUmE-tne5U (3.48 minutes long)
