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Ezekiel 4:16 "Moreover he said to me, 'Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and drink water by measure and in dismay.'"

 

Jerusalem is about to have its "staff of bread", its plenty born of God's blessings, broken. They will be taken into exile and rationed in the most basic of necessities. "The people of Israel shall eat their bread unclean, among the nations whither I will drive them." (Ezekiel 4:13) God is giving Ezekiel elaborate instructions on how to show the people that this will happen, including lying bound on his left side for 390 days and his right side for 40 days representing the length of Israel's and Judah's punishment. (Ezekiel 4:4-8). God is using Ezekiel to warn the people of their coming exile, lack, and dismay. 

 

We may not have prophets showing us with this degree of specificity what is coming, but we do have the signs of our times. If we start to notice we are being rationed, we can take that as a sign there's something wrong. God wants to bless His people with plenty. When He breaks the "staff of bread", or anything else, it is for a reason.

 

Lately God has been allowing us to break our own staffs, of bread (with misguided farmland policies); of energy (with often onerous and counterproductive green restrictions (many examples here)); and so many other things. It really is crazy how we are so willing to get in the way of God's plenty by imposing our own misguided restrictions on the blessings of this world. It is a sign of a false religion when good things are rationed in the name of some greater "good" that is not God. I think God is calling us away from that kind of very prevalent idolatry by allowing us to suffer the consequences of breaking our own staffs of bread.