Economic Crunch Coming

I've seen other articles since I posted on the likelihood of food shortages, which say we probably won't feel it very much as a shortage, at least not right away. We will, however, feel the price crunch and that will affect Americans on the lower end of the economic scale who are already barely making ends meet. True, most of us would be better off eating less for a while anyway.

But I do see this as part of a growing trend. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but this is how it goes: 9/11 already made a dent in the economy by forcing airlines into bankruptcy, a situation which has been evolving over time. Hurricane Katrina is what started pushing the price of oil up and up, which has been pushing food prices up, also getting worse over time. The nation has been paying out enormous sums of disaster relief money for what seems to be a string of unusually severe natural disasters over the last few years, disasters of all kinds from hurricanes to wildfires to tornadoes to floods. Relief is still available, but always there are some who fall through the cracks anyway, and at some point if the trend continues the bank that finances the relief simply has to break.

It's just a matter of time as long as we continue as a nation on our downhill slide into paganism and immorality. Surely Christians know that God is behind all these events, surely we know these are ways He brings judgment against nations, surely we know that America deserves judgment for a disgraceful list of government-sponsored sins that have been accumulating for decades now.

Surely we know that the only way to prevent complete desolation is national repentance. Is it happening? Is it even happening in the churches where of all places it should be happening? Where's the sackcloth and ashes, the weeks of corporate humbling before God in repentance and pleading for thenation? In the past America actually had some Presidents who called for times of fasting and prayer. Churches that wanted God to comedown and revive the Christian life of their communities used to praythrough the night for months. Now it's rare if a church can get it together for half a day. And individually we're a sad lot when it comes to that kind of discipline, too, and here I'm mostly speaking for myself and SO wanting a spiritual strength I continually fail to muster.

So as I see it, we may not necessarily be facing a sudden crisis (although I'm not completely sure of that), but we MUST be facing a gradual tightening of the vise that we will most likely feel when it's too late.

I know I'm repeating myself. Probably for a while to come I'll be repeating some themes.