Getting Ready for Heavy Weather

The deep freeze is moving east. We have about 18 inches of snow and more is falling currently. The birds that come to our feeders ate 5 pounds of seed and much suet just since dawn. Tonight they say it will get down to 6F. I just came in with four loads of firewood so its nice and dry for stoking the fire tonight. I was thinking today how this weather could be used as an analogy for what is going on right now in America.

Indeed it is time to make ready for heavy weather in the economy and in public life. The summer is over and we are now in late autumn. As we see winter coming many know they did not take care to put away stores for the winter. When the sun shone brightly and the breeze was balmy they could not think of what would soon come. Like small children living only in the present they thought the warmth and plenty would be forever and ever. Animals put on fat for winter and store up food for the bad weather. They look for shelter to protect them from the coming cold. It is almost Biblical how America created this current crisis thinking summer would last forever. Even those with great wealth put very little by to get through hard times. Since the seventies when I was a teen it seems people always believed the hard times were behind us and that things would only get better. Now we see what can happen. Our parents and grandparents suffered through world wars and the great depression. They were made strong by having to work hard and struggle. They valued all that they had and did not waste. But the boomers and the boomers children were born in a time of plenty and they did not heed the lessons the children of the great depression tried to pass on. They said their parents were backwards and gloomy. The arrogance is incredible. Almost no one saved and they spent all they had and mortgaged their futures and for what? What they did was borrow on their children's future and they brought this country and the world to its knees.

Hosea 8
King James Bible

1. Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law.

2. Israel shall cry unto me, My God, we know thee.

3. Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him.

4. They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.

5. Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off; mine anger is kindled against them: how long will it be ere they attain to innocency?

6. For from Israel was it also: the workman made it; therefore it is not God: but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.

7. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

8. Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is no pleasure.

9. For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath hired lovers.

10. Yea, though they have hired among the nations, now will I gather them, and they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes.

11. Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin.

12. I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.

13. They sacrifice flesh for the sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but the LORD accepteth them not; now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt.

14. For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof.