Plenty Meet Dearth

I feel a multipart series coming on. Given that satan has pulled out all the stops in the final push to eradicate any trace of morality, common decency and common sense, thereby erasing any vestige of the values that keep humans restrained by the God created universal laws of creation, I see no downside to speaking up for God's side. If I get arrested or just canceled, I'm okay with that. I have chosen the hill I am willing to die on. 

The links form here:

Part 1 - Rock Meet Bottom

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I recently had an opportunity to have a reflective moment with a twenty year old grandson over lunch. The conversation began with the state of the world in this moment and how it's a challenge to find a restaurant because no one wants that kind of job in post Covid Lockdown World. 

Chatting with a twenty year old reveals the maturing process.  You can talk about your history with a 20 something grand because he or she realizes it is also their history. A younger person is bored by such reminiscing because it doesn't plug into their current interests.

I asked him what young people are doing for money and he enlightened me about all the ways young adults make money online. Some of which prudence guides me to not repeat in this blog.

But the topic opened up the opportunity for me to give him a bigger view of how things have been in the past because it seems we might be about to repeat a few things. 

After all, like it or not, my history is his history too but more importantly his future is my concern.

I started with the fact that my parents were teens during the early years of the Great Depression so they knew all about doing without and making do with what they had. There were and always have been the elite wealthy class even in the worst of times who hardly feel any inconvenience or lack, just as there are the extremely poor who suffer dearth in what we label third world countries, but from 1929 to 1942 the majority of the American citizenry experienced first hand not having quite enough all the time. 

As my parents hit their adulthood WW2 caused even more reasons for most people to have to do without. My parents had two small children to care for even as ration cards were the normal way to acquire a small allotment of scarce food and supples. Given the limited availability of goods and much of what was redirected to what they referred to as "the war effort" most people simply did not expect much and therefore were accustomed to having nothing and next to nothing including what we, in the age of plenty, would consider necessities.

My point in relaying this bit of history to my grandson was to encourage him with another perspective because his generation and that of his parents have mostly only known abundance. Multiple choices of everything on shelves from floor to 25' ceilings in warehouse sized stores produced by numerous competitive companies make it nearly impossible to imagine empty shelves here in the modern prosperous western world.

But the complications and challenges of the past year or so have introduced the possibility that we might be faced with a similar harsh reality that my parents grew up thinking was normal. Making do and doing without are conditions that loom large as the gears of our long prosperous economy grinds to a halt. 

The generation that suffered their youth in conditions of great paucity and then went off to war as they reached their budding adulthoods, many never coming home, were dubbed the Greatest Generation. I have to wonder, though, was it the circumstances of experiencing great deprivation that toughened them up to return home from the horrors of war ready to move on with life, to find mates, to have children, to create businesses and birth a new age of plenty that the world had never known?

Or was it something more profound and difficult to define? Like good character, integrity, morality, work ethics, love of God, family and country that shored them up and kept them moving forward? 

What if it is these qualities that are necessary to meet the challenges of the loss of prosperity and the new normal of dearth? What if the up and coming generation is not prepared to face such challenges because they have revised definitions for how to exist in a modern world?

Which is better - to grow up with making do with practically nothing and moving forward to build to the point of too much - or growing up knowing nothing about having to do without and suddenly finding there is nothing to be had?

So many questions.

For Him,

Meema

Proverbs 22:16

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.