I could have HURLED my lunch.....

I heard the craziest thing the other day, and I couldn't believe what the world is coming to. I sound like my grandfather, I know, I know.
So I found this crazy thing on some news clip on Yahoo or something like that, all about how with the "horrendous" economic downturn in our country people are now selling their possessions on Craigslist and Ebay and other such sites, just to live and put food on the table.
Well, first of all, that is not a new concept, in college I was selling my possessions just to feed myself on the weekends when the cafeteria was closed.
But when I saw this news story I thought, oh my word, gag me with a spoon.
People are selling the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of possessions they own, which they never needed in the first place, to actually pay off their credit cards and pay for their groceries with cash, and that's a tragedy???
Hallelujah that finally people are coming to their senses and realizing that if they hadn't bought all that junk in the first place they would have the money in their checking accounts or in, heaven forbid, a savings account, to pay for the things they need now. And just think about what the economic forecast for the country would look like today if just a couple of years ago thousands and thousands of people had purchased homes and cars they could actually afford.
So needless to say I was having a hard time shedding a tear for the economically downtrodden middle class in America. Just think of how many millions of starving people in the world would love to have a single solitary possession to sell to buy clothing and food for their children. So no, there is no sympathy from me.
I think it is about time that we learn some hard lessons on the value of a dollar and actually scrimp and save just to buy the necessities. Now isn't that a concept???
And just think about it - we are in wartime - have been for four or five years now, and think about the American mentality, even in wartime, as compared to, oh, say, the 1940s when the greatest generation was in Poland fighting maybe the greatest war ever in the history of the world. We have no concept of what everyone was sacrificing at that time.
And in our time, crazy enough, we're getting $1000 economic stimulus packages from our government - during wartime. And the even crazier thing is that we actually expect this kind of thing. We expect that everyone, especially the government, will do whatever it takes so that we can live our lives of comfort, of recreational shopping on the weekends, of consuming everything in sight like nothing has an end, and of always needing more.
My prayer and hope for America is that we come to a place of brokenness and actually choose to get off of the roller coaster - the roller coaster of buy more, get more, shop more, spend more ....