"I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food...." It's the most popular story in today's Wall Street Journal. Even the Columbia State took note that food rationing has arrived at the nearest Sam's Club. What strange, familiar emotion is that in my gut that makes me want to run out and drag home a 25-pound bag of rice, and hide it at the back of the closet?
Walter Brueggmann knows:
"We who are now the richest nation are today's main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God's abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity—a belief that makes us greedy, mean, and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity. . . .We can live according to an ethic whereby we are not driven, controlled, anxious, frantic, or greedy, precisely because we are sufficiently at home and at peace to care about others as we have been cared for."Whew! I feel better already! Read all of "The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity," here. And if you still feel scared, come on over and we'll cook up a big pot of rice to share, and talk about it.
1 comment:
I saved the article to read and re-read. We are so indoctrinated with the doctrine of scarcity that it's hard to really accept - intellectually and emotional - a doctrine of plenty. The only person I've ever known who truly lived in the moment and trusted God to provide for the future was Gooda, my grandmother. It worked for her because my mother always saw to it that the daily necessities are taken care of.
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