When will the bleeding end?

I typically write in my blog about ministry related items, with the occasional non-ministry item here and there. This is one of those non-ministry related items, although I think it has some ministry implications.

If you have been paying attention at all to just about ANY media lately I am sure you are reading about the economic downturn that we are in. Just less than a year ago it seemed like our economy was BOOMING. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 14,000 and it seemed like everyone had a house and a job. But this last year has been disastrous. The Dow is down under 11,000 - it lost 504.48 points on Monday, had a little gain on Tuesday, but is down another 363.46 as of this writing (Wednesday). We have seen the failure of many banks, we have seen the Federal Government bail out Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and now AIG, while leaving others to simply fail. We are seeing people losing their homes at a record pace, and the unemployment going up at a steady rate.

So when will the bleeding end??? It is like when you cut yourself and the wound bleeds and bleeds and bleeds and it seems like it is never going to end. The economy is going through that right now, and all we can do is hold on.

It seems like there are certain political figures that want to blame this on the current Government administration. They seem to want to pin this on the government and say that it is their fault that we are going through all this. They then have a list of all the things the government should have done to prevent it. When it comes down to it, the government is not responsible for this downturn - the Greedy American Public IS!!!

For too long we have said, I want more, more, more. We have turned to credit to try to satisfy our desires. We want a bigger house, so we go and get a loan for that bigger house. We want a better, nicer car, so we go and get a loan for that. We then find out that our funds run out before the end of the month, well we have credit cards to take care of that, and eventually we can't even pay our bills. Now I know that some people out there were the victims of predatory lending, and I really feel bad for them, and I feel bad for the people who have been laid off of work and lost their house or car. But, for the vast majority of people they simply got greedy, and now are paying the consequences for that greed.

The greed goes beyond just the common person and into the corporate world, where corporate greed has caused many of these banks to fail. For goodness sake, there are CEOs out there making hundreds of millions of dollars while the company they are in charge of is filing bankruptcy. There has to be something wrong with that.

In all, like I said it all goes back to the fact that Americans have become VERY greedy.

I love reading the book of Ecclesiastes - the writer of Ecclesiastes, probably King Solomon said this, "Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless."

Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:10 and said, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

It isn't our money that has caused the problem for the U.S. economy. It is our greed for MORE. Once again scripture proves itself right - when you get greedy (love of money) you open yourself up to all kinds of trouble.

So America, we go through another great economic downturn - will we ever learn to be content because Greed destroys.