Wealth is deceptive, for all people – the poor, the uber-wealthy and everyone in between (even Episcopalians ; - ) – we have it on good authority:
As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.
The poor and elderly poor and others as well stand in line with blank faces, many with blank eyes, to buy their lottery tickets, imagining all their problems would disappear if they were wealthy.
Let’s not blame the poor and the elderly for their desperation. They would still be poor even if they didn’t buy lottery tickets. I would say they don’t understand that the odds are stacked against them and their chances of winning are virtually nil. But if God controls chance, wouldn’t you think he’d make a poor person win every single time?
The red horseman of war often precedes the black horseman of famine, be creating enough havoc and destruction that food is impossible to produce. Ukraine lives up to its image as the breadbasket of Europe, and should that harvest be taken off the table, it will create a shortage what will be hard to fill at the best of times. With the drought in Somalia, these are not the best of times.
The increase in energy costs is not helpful. Natural gas is an essential direct feedstock for ammonia and urea production. Fertilizer production has been curtailed in response to the dizzying rise in gas prices even before the Ukraine invasion. Food also constitutes a significant portion of the global transportation system; whether by train or vessel or truck, the fuel costs must be borne by the recipient. President Biden announced just this week that, in response to gasoline prices, corn based ethanol blends would be allowed to rise from 10% to 15%. That is filling gas tanks with what could be dinner for a village.
In the past eleven years, the global population has gone from 7 to 7.9 billion, an increase of 900 million appetites. The world can feed that and more, but at the cost of ever increasing deforestation and CO2 emissions. I’m sure that in the future tractors will run off of rainbow capture, but that is not the here and now. I wish I had an answer for all this, but I feel that the apocalyptic crowd might actually possess the high ground in present circumstances, if things fall apart worse.
All the makings of a tragedy where good intentions and resolve just are not enough. How long I wonder before the tragic conditions reap consequences all must feel? Collectively we unleash the forces which the resolve of all the billionaire would/be good guys put together is just not enough. Of course the amassing of those concentrations of wealth itself contributes more to the tragic forces than any subsequent resolve can contribute to their undoing.