"Fuel prices have fallen back. Will we fall back, too?" -- by the Rev. Lauren R. Stanle. W

In the midst of this humongous economic mess, when all of us are fretting constantly about our futures, there’s a glimmer of hope in our lives: The price of gas has fallen to incredible lows, which means that at least one thing we have to buy won’t cost us an arm and a leg.

Just the other day, I managed to buy gas for $1.44 a gallon. If I had purchased fuel a few days earlier, I could have gotten it for $1.39 per gallon.

Every time I tank up – and I have to do that a lot, because I travel long distances, usually by car – I marvel at how cheap it is. I can fill the tank for less than $20!

And to think, just last summer, it cost me nearly $40 for the same amount of fuel.

Am I glad about this? Absolutely.

But I’m also somewhat confused and very worried.

First, the confusion:

Why, pray tell, did the price of gas, and of oil overall, skyrocket so much last summer? There were all kinds of explanations, but few wanted to admit that for the most part, speculation and greed were to blame.

Now, can anyone explain exactly why the prices are so low? Oil closed recently around $39 per barrel. OPEC, under the leadership of the King of Saudi Arabia, thinks that $75 per barrel would be the best price. They made that announcement and prices fell yet again.

So what’s going on?

Second, the worry, which is far more important:

What are we going to do about it?

I’m not talking about getting into oil futures. I’m talking about what each of us is going to do, now that gas is practically dirt cheap again. Are we going to go back to driving our cars far too much, without a care about the environment anymore? Are people who drive gas-guzzlers of all kinds, the ones that couldn’t be sold just six months ago, going to resume driving them, using way too much gas?

Or are we going to continue our gas-saving ways, walking more, using public transportation, thinking hard about where we need to go and where we want to go and how to bundle trips so that we aren’t wasting gas frivolously?

Good times are here again, at least when it comes to fuel prices, but that doesn’t give us the right to take it and run without thinking. When it cost us an arm and a leg to fill our tanks, we immediately went into environmental consciousness mode. We were energy conscious. We used less gas. We were, in a word, good to God’s very good creation.

But now, with ridiculously low prices at the fuel pump, we’re at the very least tempted to forget all we learned during economic hardship and go back to our wasteful ways.

We’ve had our warning. We’ve received our blessing.

Now the question is, what are we going to do with them?

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The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church serving in the Diocese of Renk, Sudan. She is a lecturer at the Renk Theological College, teaching Theology, Liturgy, Biblical Greek and English, and serves as chaplain for the students.