Advent 18

The Third Thursday of Advent 2008, December 18, 2008

Isaiah 9:18-10:4 

The land is scorched by the fury of the LORD of Hosts, and the people have become fuel for the fire.  On the right, one man eats his fill but yet is hungry; on the left, another devours but is not satisfied; each feeds on his own children’s flesh, and neither spares his own brother. 

In the book The Worst Hard Time, author Timothy Egan describes the Dust Bowl and the people who stayed on the land.  Most Americans are familiar with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the story of those who migrated; but Egan writes of those who clung to their worthless, scoured land. 

I could not believe that anyone stayed.  Planting wheat had made many people rich because for nearly a decade after settlers moved into the prairie, there was unusually abundant rainfall in this barren section of Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico; but when the rainfall returned to normal for that arid region, the wheat died and the soil was left loose and subject to the north winds that blew through.  Huge black clouds of dirt, up to 15,000 feet high, rolled over towns and ranches, under doors and eaves, collapsing ceilings with the weight of dirt that had seeped under the roof.  Dirt pneumonia killed children.  In one scene, during a rabbit hunt on Sunday, a black cloud—they came four to six a month—rolled into town, scattering the hunters.  One minister shouted at the hunters, “This is the Lord’s wrath for killing bunnies on the Sabbath.” 

Most of us can see that the hundreds of killer dirt clouds were the result of destroying the prairie grass whose roots had kept the soil in place through drought and rain, for hundreds of years.  What is called God’s punishment is frequently simply the consequence of unwise or unkind/greedy practices of mankind. 

Almost every difficulty Israel faced was a result of their own unwise, often greedy, actions.  Almost every difficulty we face as a nation today, physically, economically, politically, can be traced to us, not to God.  Have we the courage to accept this? 

God help us.