Preparing For The Coming 'Seven Lean Years'

"Neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor
things to come... nor anything in all creation,
can separate us from God's love," but many 
things can separate us from our wealth.

One cannot read history without becoming painfully aware of how swiftly and radically the life of whole nations and civilizations can be upended by economic failures, civil unrest, wars and natural disasters. 

Witness the disruption in the lives of millions of people in the apocalyptic World War II era, for example, or more recently those in famine-stricken sub saharan Africa, or the millions of our world neighbors in places like Ethiopia and Ukraine who are suffering terribly as a result of military conflicts.

In Jewish history a Hebrew in exile, Joseph, accurately interpreted the troubling dreams of an Egyptian Pharaoh as portending that seven years national prosperity would be followed by seven years of dire famine. 

Like people in ancient Egypt, most of us North Americans seem to assume our long run of economic growth will continue forever. It will not. Like the prosperous economies of all past empires, ours will one day experience its inevitable collapse. 

After the US recession of the early 80's the faculty of Eastern Mennonite High School, where I taught part time, engaged in a conversation about how we might continue to serve the needs of our constituency if there were another Great Depression. It was a hypothetical exercise, of course, but the group came up with ideas like voluntarily cutting our salaries, reducing heating and cooling costs by shortening summer vacation and having a break during the very coldest times of the year, going to a four day week with longer school days to reduce travel, utility, and cafeteria costs, lowering thermostats in the winter and raising them in warmer seasons, etc. 

In light of the needs of millions of our world neighbors already experiencing desperately lean years, what if we were to implement some of these kinds of cost cutting and energy saving measures during relatively good times? Joseph's advice, after all, was to have all of Egypt take measures during their years of prosperity that would help them and others to survive during the lean years.

Sadly, most of us humans seem to be hardwired to give priority to ensuring our immediate comfort and convenience rather than to practicing self denial and compassionate care for the needs of our world and next door neighbors as ourselves.  In the end, each of our wellbeing on the planet depends on the wellbeing of all.