The drought as God's corrective discipline for greed

The farmers sit on their fields, clasping their hands over their knees—the very posture of mourners—and weep over their useless labors. They look at their little children and lament; they gaze at their wives and grieve; they touch and feel the dry stalks of their crops and cry out loudly, like fathers who have lost sons in the flower of youth. Let the same prophet I mentioned a moment ago in the introduction speak to us as well: “I withheld the rain from you three months before the harvest. I will send rain on one city, and on another city I will send no rain. One field will be soaked, and the field on which I send no rain will wither. Two or three cities will gather to one city to drink water, and they will not be satisfied, because you did not turn back to me, says the Lord” (Amos 4:7-8). Let us learn, then, that God sends these blows upon us because of our turning away and neglect—not seeking to destroy us, but eager to set us right, like good fathers with careless children, who grow angry with the young and rise up against them, not because they are eager to do them harm, but to lead them from childish indifference and the sins of youth into careful living. You see, then, how the multitude of our sins has driven the seasons out of their own natures and changed the character of the times into strange mixtures. Winter did not have its usual moisture alongside the dry cold; instead the frost bound up and dried out every trace of dampness, and the season passed without snow or rain. Spring, in turn, displayed one part of its proper qualities—the warmth, I mean—but had no share of moisture. Scorching heat and biting cold, strangely overstepping the boundaries of creation and wickedly conspiring together for our harm, drive human beings from their livelihood and their very life. What, then, is the cause of this disorder and confusion? What is this innovation in the seasons? Let us search it out, as people with understanding; let us reason it through, as rational beings. Is there no one steering the universe? Has God the master-craftsman forgotten his governance? Has he been stripped of authority and power? Or does he still hold the same strength and has not lost his might, but has been carried away into harshness, and has turned his great goodness and care for us into hatred of humanity? No one in his right mind would say that. Rather, the causes are plain and clear, and they explain why we are not governed in the usual way. We receive, but we do not give to others. We praise generosity, and we rob the needy of it. We are slaves, and we are set free, yet we do not pity our fellow slaves. We are hungry, and we are fed, yet we pass by the one in want. We have God as a provider and steward who lacks nothing, yet we have become stingy and selfish toward the poor. Our sheep bear many young, and the naked are more numerous than the sheep. Our storehouses are cramped by the abundance of what is stored in them, and we do not pity the one in distress. This is why the righteous judgment threatens us. This is why God does not open his hand: because we have shut the door on love for one another.