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Jeremiah 2:12-13 "Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

 

When opening the Bible for my daily verse this morning, I asked the Holy Spirit to give me something hopeful. I have been so worried about the state of our country and world for so long, and this morning I was feeling especially saddened due to two things I recently read. We are on such a bad path, and it seems so many still do not want to admit or recognize it, so worse and worse things keep happening.

 

One of the things that had me especially concerned was a news story from a few days ago about a gay couple who purchased a child through surrogacy, and one of them is a child sex offender. Apparently this was made possible through a loophole in Pennsylvania's surrogacy law. Surrogacy reduces children to commodities, and women to rentable vessels. It is human trafficking, it is evil, and as such, it leads to terrible situations like this one. The other thing that was making me sad was that I read that the Baby Boom generation has aborted approximately 1/3 of their children - an estimated 40 million people who should be here are not. 

 

This all is a natural progression from contraception. Once we separated sex from its purpose, children become ours to create, use, and dispose of as we see fit (we don't admit this to ourselves as a society, but it is the subconscious result of what we are doing). Surrogacy, abortion, IVF, and contraception are all part of the same cistern. It is empty and broken because God is not there - we have kicked Him out of His role in Creation. Our society has hewed its own cistern in which we think we can control Creation. Because we are broken ourselves, when we try to do this, we go down the route of evil, just as the devil leads us.

 

I did not get a hopeful message today; the Holy Spirit instead reminded me that there are times when I should feel appalled, shocked, and desolate, and I am living in one now. What I should do is strive to help people out of their empty cisterns, and to the living waters. Many don't want to leave, but I am sure there are some who do. That's where the hope lies.