For the Homeless and the Helpless

The stories coming out of the American South are harsh and frightening. We humans can degrade into horrible creatures all too quickly. What strikes me the most is that it is the poorest of the poor who are affected the most. The rich could afford to escape but the poor had no means by which they could have avoided this terrible scene. The longer this goes on, meaning the longer the homeless are helpless the more they will turn to violence to solve their problems. If reading The Lord of the Flies taught me anything it taught me that we humans will degrade all too quickly and rely upon our instincts for survival of the fittest.

I also weep when I read such terrible stories that try to find blame for this disaster. To pin it on a religious group, or sexual persuasion, or on God Himself is seeking to ignore the real reason that this disaster happened. We have been treating the earth that God gave us with such disrespect and abusing nature so much that we have brought this horrific scene upon ourselves. The harmony that God created has been disrupted by our pollution, greed and apathy. Now, we are seeing the results of being poor stewards of God's earth. With a great deal of luck the powerful and rich who want to ignore what they could do to help this problem will be forced to see what it is that they could do. But then that might acutally mean that their profits would suffer - god (please notice I use the lower-case here for a reason and on purpose) forbid our profits would suffer!

Greed is what has caused this horrific scene and it is the poor who must pay the price. No wonder they feel that violence is the only way to solve their problems.

I pray that God will be with those who are feeling abandoned and hopeless. And I pray that the rich and powerful will see that there is profit in saving this world that was beautiful.