What would our world be like if we simplified and satisfied ourselves with having just what we need for today instead of this enslaving lifestyle of hoarding resources? God provides enough, abundantly enough for everybody. But when people start hoarding wealth something rotten breaks into the system – poverty, disease, famine.
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| Gathering manna from Heaven. |
Yes, this simpler lifestyle that’s required of us in God’s economy led to some complaining by God’s people but God listened and responded. They complained that God had brought them out into the wilderness to kill them with thirst and hunger; and, “if only the LORD had killed us in Egypt were we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill”. But, memory is flawed. Nostalgia is flawed.
Ever thought of what a fleshpot is. It sounds like they ate a hearty stew everyday, but rethink that. A fleshpot was a stew of food wastes provided by your taskmasters. It had meat – entrails, rats, animals that died of disease. We wonder what goes into a hotdog. Fleshpots were way grosser than that. They were like cooking up the food wastes you find in a dumpster.
In God’s economy in the wilderness, He provided bread, manna, and quail; abundantly enough for the day and hoarding was not allowed nor needed. Imagine if we could simplify our lifestyle and let ourselves by satisfied with the daily bread God provides. I don’t know. That might be unimaginable. Some might take offense and say it sounds too much like socialism or communism.
In God’s economy in the wilderness, He provided bread, manna, and quail; abundantly enough for the day and hoarding was not allowed nor needed. Imagine if we could simplify our lifestyle and let ourselves by satisfied with the daily bread God provides. I don’t know. That might be unimaginable. Some might take offense and say it sounds too much like socialism or communism.
But seriously, what do we have now? We have rampant obesity and are largely unhealthy and have to take drugs to counteract what are essentially dietary issues. We humans throw away 25-40% of the food we produce while almost 800 million people, 10% of the global population, mostly women and children won’t get enough to eat today. Upwards of 6 million children a year globally die due to malnutrition. That’s the end result of our Pharaonic pursuit of wealth and power.
In Pharaoh’s economy everybody had a job producing the stuff that made Pharaoh look wealthy and powerful and there was no rest from their labours. In the wilderness under God’s economy, the people were united in their purpose of getting to where God wanted them to be even if it did seem like purposeless wandering and He made sure there was a day of rest. In fact, the first labour law in history was God’s provision for the Sabbath; every seventh day was a day of rest. The Sabbath laws even grew in scope once they got into the Promised Land to include the land itself. Every seventh year a field was to be left to rest.
In Pharaoh’s economy everybody had a job producing the stuff that made Pharaoh look wealthy and powerful and there was no rest from their labours. In the wilderness under God’s economy, the people were united in their purpose of getting to where God wanted them to be even if it did seem like purposeless wandering and He made sure there was a day of rest. In fact, the first labour law in history was God’s provision for the Sabbath; every seventh day was a day of rest. The Sabbath laws even grew in scope once they got into the Promised Land to include the land itself. Every seventh year a field was to be left to rest.
Today due to technology, internet and smartphones, work is everywhere our smartphone is. There’s no time off. We used to have an economy where people worked five days, Saturday was chore day, and Sunday was rest day. But, our debt-encrusted pursuit of wealth has done away with that weekly routine…and it is killing the planet we live on.
We can talk about reducing Greenhouse gases to stop global warming and save the planet, but until we are willing to put aside our own individual pursuits of more wealth and simplify and resolve to live on the abundance of the “enough” that God daily provides and find a way to make God’s economy the way our global economy works, we are not going to solve the global climate issues we’ve created.
If we want to curb a global pandemic, then we each need to make the simple lifestyle changes of wearing a mask and keeping physical distance. If we want to curb the coming global climate crisis, then we each must make the lifestyle choice of living according to God’s economy rather than Pharaoh’s.
~~ (*)An extract from an on line sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Randy Benson of the Central Grey Bruce Presbyterian Co-Op Ministry
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