God has provided our planet with ways of producing food for our three billion inhabitants.

Monday, 8/3/15

It was marvelous the way Jesus fed five thousand with five loaves. It is the only miracle described in detail in all four Gospels.

Let’s look at the first reading. It tells us how the six thousand families that followed Moses stayed alive for forty years, eating what the desert provided.

People in the Sinai Desert still eat what they call manna. As the Bible describes it, it is resin that falls to the ground from Tamarisk trees in the cool of the night. It melts into the sand when the day’s heat reaches 80 degrees.

All this talk about miraculous food should not let us forget how God’s earth provides daily food for the three billion people living here.

Thinking about that should put us in mind of the latest Encyclical from Pope Francis. He quoted Genesis where God told us to “till the earth.” He was telling us to care for the earth properly so that it would provide the food we need.

Francis points out ways in which we are dangerously misusing his earth.

Today’s paper does the same. It speaks of how the global warming we have bought on has raised summer temperatures in Iraq to 120. Another story tells how the government in Liberia, in need of oil, has made the people give vegetable planting over to make way for planting oil producing palm trees.