When I was just a little child…

I remember when I was the mere age of 3 or 4 years old my mother enrolled me in a Sunday School class that was held every Sunday before the 11am mass. I don’t remember who my teacher was… But I do remember often having fun. We would do different crafts, and coloring pages etc. But there is one thing I distinctly remember that has stuck with me, and in some ways caused me a lot of worry and/or fear as a child no matter how silly it seems.

When I was a small child I was very self-conscious, and always concerned about making sure I never sinned. I would say my prayers, and make sure I was polite. Most important I would try my hardest to make sure I never broke the ten commandments. So when I was in this pre-k Sunday school class and my Sunday School teacher was teaching us to never be wasteful… I about broke down in tears when she followed it up by saying “Have you ever gotten a glass of water from the sink, and couldn’t finish it so you poured the rest down the drain? Well that was wasteful. You wasted natural resources God gave you.” I had done that quite a bit. I would get some water drink my fill and put the rest down the drain. At the age of 3 I thought I was an awful human being for putting water down the drain. I never told anyone how this made me feel, and after that I stopped pouring the water down the drain. I would force myself to drink the entire cup. Now this seems like something small. However, when I was 3 I thought I might go to Hell because I was pouring water down the drain. I can tell you at the mere age of 3 that water was not causing a city-wide drought, or even with the way the sewer systems are run was it necessarily “wasted”. Maybe a waste of money since water is typically billed by the gallon… But outright waste? No.

However ever since that Sunday school class whenever I get a glass of water I think about that. Psychologically you wouldn’t think it would’ve impacted me the way it has over the years. It was some thing so small… But it has. And as I get older when I think about it… I think of how wasteful I am in maybe other ways that I don’t normally think about. So that one small sentence said to a room full of small children… Made a big difference in how I view certain things. It only takes one spark to start a fire, and one fire can deplete a forest. What will be your chain reaction? One sentence got a 3 year-old to figure out how to reduce her waste up unto the age of 28 so far.