Solomon's Window: On the Farm and the Savagery of the Senate Meets the Strength of Amy

When God created man He made him of dust and Deity; sin introduced the other element, viz., drudgery.  Drudgery is a great sounding word for hard work - “Cursed is the ground for your sake; . . . thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you; . . . in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread.” 

What would happen if we took the members of Antifa and BLM off the streets and sent them to toil in the corn and wheat fields of a few farms in Iowa or Kansas or Nebraska?  Instead of hauling them to jail only to be bailed out, have them learn the real meaning of "drudgery" for a few weeks.  Besides learning that money doesn't grow on trees or a cornstalk, they might learn at least two lessons: 

- First, they earn a profit both financially and emotionally.  With a day's worth of drudgery, there comes a lasting satisfaction of accomplishment and productivity -a satisfaction that looting, burning, and pillaging will never give them.  

- Second, after a day's work of sweat and toil in the fields, as my dad would say - they will be "too pooped to pop" to get back on the streets and cause mayhem; they will finally perhaps for the first time feel the exhilarating freshness of getting a good night's sleep. And, a good night's sleep just might clear their minds and hearts of all the hate they once brought to the streets.  

The earth is cursed because of man abandoning God.  But, when that abandonment ceases in actual history, the ground will no longer bring forth the curse. The final redemption includes “new heavens and a new earth.” 

- “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree”; and “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” 

- Instead of the savage ferocity of the beasts, there will be the strength without the savageness—an inconceivable order of things just now. 

What we are witnessing on the streets of our cities and even in our halls of Congress is not strength but a savage ferocity in trading the love, joy, peace, and comfort of God for lives full of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 

This week we anticipate another "borking" of a Supreme Court Justice nominee - Amy Coney Barrett in her Senate confirmation hearing.  It will be another chapter of the Democrats'  savage ferocity against the strength and grace of a woman who is judge, wife, and mother.  

In anything like a revolution or a war, we find that the Bible teaches us that to make profit you must go back to the dust you came from. The real reason for the revolution currently pushing America into socialism is that there is the mistaken idea by the left that with socialism you can depend on the government to supply your needs without having to go back to the dust you came from.  

And, when there is an added move to cancel history - to forget the past - one discovers to their horror the hard reality of socialism by direct personal experience - everyone goes back to the dust they came from except a small elite class who grab all the profit from your sweat and toil - leaving you with no satisfying profit and no satisfying good night's sleep. 

The curious thing about civilization is that it tends to take men away from the soil, and makes them develop an artificial existence away from the elemental. Civilization has become an elaborate way of doing without God. 

The coronavirus pandemic moved us further away from the soil - from the elemental that once kept us close and dependent on God.  Both workers and students had to hibernate at home on the internet and even churches had to move online into a more artificial style of what many call "worship in pajamas". This crockpot of forced isolation brewed up the right recipe for the disaster of destruction that has exploded onto our city streets and into our halls of Congress in a heated election year. 

When civilized life is hit a smashing blow by any order of tyranny, most of us have not a leg to stand on. Bible wisdom reminds us that king and peasant alike can only gain their profit by proper cultivation of the soil. The curse of sin causes the earth to groan under the weight of its wickedness. Unwise forest management has led to the fiery inferno of California and the West Coast, preventing foresters from properly cultivating the soil for planting new trees.

The laws given in the Bible include a scheme for the treatment of the earth and they insist on proper rest being given to the land.  And, they make it clear that that alone will bring profit in actual existence. Leviticus 25 is the great classic on the rights of the earth.  Even the land needs "a good night's sleep" to replenish its nutrients for a fruitful harvest.  

Our hearts are compared to the soil as well.  A healed heart that rests in the saving grace of Christ's forgiveness and cleansing is a cultivated heart that produces the fruit of the Spirit - an eternal harvest and profit of love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control, and faith.

- Adapted from Oswald Chambers' The Shade of His Hand