Food Shortages, "Global Weirding"....and God

Texas is having one of the worst droughts it has ever seen. After a recent conversation with his father (who lives in the Texas panhandle), Randy was relaying to me what his father told him and the gist of it was this:
"Son, it is so dry here that even the weeds are dying. Never in my lifetime have I seen the likes of this. Never."

I was aware of the terrible drought and wildfires in Texas that have been ravaging the land and I have been keeping myself informed regarding the dire situation there. This video gives a tiny glimpse of the troubles affecting farmers in Texas this year. In some areas it's worse.

I mention Texas in particular but the weather has been having adverse affects on farmers in many parts of the U.S. Take a look at these maps showing the natural disasters that have affected the "breadbasket" of our country. It's pretty alarming. We've seen food prices skyrocket over the past few years. My own grocery bill has gone up considerably and we are only feeding a family of three over here. Imagine folks who have large families? How about the poor? I am also linking to another site which gives you an overall viewpoint on the reasons why food prices will continue to rise. While I'm not necessarily advocating storing a year's supply of food (we certainly haven't done this in my home) the article is very interesting, especially if you scroll down to 20 Signs that a Horrific Global Food Crisis is Coming.

It goes without saying that one of the reasons for the increase in food prices is the price of oil. While this is an older article,  the graph accompanying it is relevant to our current crisis nonetheless. The U.S, as a wealthy nation (with a HUGE national debt) has not yet felt the full effects of the global food crisis to the degree that other countries have.

In one of the links someone commented and suggests that it isn't a "food" problem that we are having but a "people problem", and condones abortion and limiting the population. Personally, I believe that this "limiting of the population" and numerous other sins are the cause of the problems the world is facing today. The physical is a reflection of the spiritual, one could say. As personal sin sends people spiralling toward, (dare I say it?) hell (oops! how UN politically correct of me) the earth cries out with us. This is not some New Age theory. Sin has ramifications, we see this in our own lives - what makes people think that it doesn't affect the entire earth, also? Animals do not sin ....yet they die. Plants do not sin, yet they get diseases. When the human race fell the entire earth fell with it. Human sin has effects far, far beyond what we see with our natural eyes. Christians know that sin has disastrous effects on all life. Most scientists, enormous intellects notwithstanding, have an enormous piece of the puzzle of life missing - and that is: we are both physical and spiritual beings and until they fit this crucial piece where it belongs they will never progress beyond a certain point.
 How about this for a scientific study? Gather the statistics on the increase of sin in the past century (abortion, adultery, pornography, immorality of all kinds, crime, etc...) and compare it with the increase in natural disasters (man made disasters are a given, everyone knows sin has a ripple effect regarding this subject). Hmmm....do you think they may possibly find a correlation between the two?

The way I see it, we have 2 choices:
1. We can continue to ignore the the existence of God and live as we choose.
2. We can turn toward God and live as He chooses.

Personally, having read the Ten Commandments, I cannot understand why anyone would choose the first, in its selfishness, over the second... which respects and protects us all. If we continue to turn away from God and live as if WE were gods I can probably make a pretty accurate prediction of what we will face:

An even higher increase in natural and man made disasters over the next decade. A continuing increase (read here, also) in suicides (The human spirit must be nourished just as the physical body needs nourishment.) More civil unrest. Wars. Further economic distress. Further corruption within our governments and major corporations. More animal die-offs. An increase in diseases.

You get the picture. I have deliberately linked to sites with no religious leanings (well, almost).

For the past two years, I've been warning that things will continue to spiral downward (and they have) if we don't make some serious changes. I thought that maybe if I provided statistics rather than simply post the words I have received that people may be more inclined to take a long, hard, look around them. Prophetic words can be waved away, what's right in front of our eyes cannot be. We are all aware of the natural disasters of the past decade so I didn't bother providing links to most of them, but I thought the ones I've added to this post might help us all see a little bit more of what is going on around us. I refuse to ignore these
signs. I refuse to turn a blind eye to the sin in our world. I refuse to stand before the Lord one day and say:

I did not speak up, Lord. No, I did not speak up. Even though I saw my brothers and sisters drowning in sin...I did not speak up to save them.

I may have to face other sins when I die - I am a sinner...but this won't be one of them.