Ezekiel 12:19-20
“‘You’ll eat your meals shaking in your boots and drink your water in terror because your land is going to be stripped bare as punishment for the brutality rampant in it. All the cities and villages will be emptied out and the fields destroyed. Then you’ll realize that I am GOD.’”
“‘They will eat their food with trembling and sip their water in despair, for their land will be stripped bare because of their violence. The cities will be destroyed and the farmland made desolate. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
Creation suffered the consequences of sin too. The text says the land will be stripped bare. It sounds painful. Farmland, tilled and weeded for generations, if left untended, is invaded by weeds and thistles and turns ugly. It will take years of labor to make such land productive again. Poor stewardship of the earth for profit is our time’s equivalent quilt. Sin’s fruit of environmental degradation is nothing new.
Lord, I pray for your good earth. It has sustained humankind so faithfully, and now it is wearing out, its resources spread amongst too many. Give it and your people strengthen to continue, as we wait and watch the end approach.