God is Generous: Famine

On Sunday, we explored the way we view the world- famine and scarcity or abundance (in God's view). I want to explore abundance through God's eyes, breaking away from the middle class view of abundance that equals safety and security for me and mine, but I will save that for later. Our passage opens us with famine, and so that is where we ought to begin.

Famine is a complicated subject in the Bible, because many famines (including probably this one) were the result of the people's disobedience to God. Nowadays, internet personalities and pundits claim that every major natural disaster is a result of some specific group or another. Interestingly, no one ever stands up and says about a hurricane, "Yep, that was me, sorry everyone." It's usually the others' sins that produce disaster. My sins produce nothing more than an interesting story to tell later. And so we have shrunk back from the connection between God and natural events. However, that shrinking back will inevitably remove from our minds the Biblical witness.

We are co-creators with God. When God created people, we were given stewardship over the land. It was our job to tend to the garden and tame the wilderness, to care for the animal species on the planet. When we messed up that stewardship, God did not take back that responsibility and power. What God did, in Genesis 3, was to say that it would get harder for us to do that which we were created to do- take care of creation. Famine usually happened when God's people turned away from the source and tried to "do it on their own." And so they created a world without God- a world of famine. Interestingly, our heavily commercialized world is seeing a dramatic increase in famine. The Sahara Desert, for example, is growing about 30 miles per year to the south. This is unprecedented growth. Desert growth contributes to poverty, mass migrations (into slums) and even wars. Many people believe that the liquid which will begin WW3 will not be oil, but water. We are living in a world of increasing famine, and we as the people of God have to stand up and say "we're sorry, we did this." It is the people of God who are given first responsibility to the land.

Think of this on a small scale- our own family lives. How many of us live in a land of famine? Not enough time, not enough energy, not enough intimacy in our relationships? And how often do we contribute to the famine by adjusting to it rather than taking our God-given power to change it?

So let me ask you- what would it take to reverse a famine? Are we ready and willing to do what it takes?