Dubai, You and Me

This morning I read this article in the New York Times by Graham Bowley and Catherine Rampell discussing the financial troubles in Dubai. The article wasn't so much concerned about the possibility that this playground in the desert might have a financial collapse, as it was whether or not this is a harbinger of things to come, things to come for us.

Is our only concern whether or not Dubai will have an impact on us? Does it bother anyone that while billions of dollars are poured into this so called desert paradise, millions of people are starving, dying because of unclean water, disease or poverty?

If this world of ours would give up a few luxuries those shoved down, held down, scratching to somehow survive might get a little breathing room. As it is, we rightly worry that the bottom will soon suck up even those who are riding high now.

Have you seen Gustav's Dore's the Flood? The parents are desperately trying to shove their children to the top of the surging waves. I wonder how we all will be, when what everyone seems to expect, finally happens.

I have no idea about this 2012 business, but it sells doesn't it? Disaster movies sell. Why is that? Is there something inside us that knows, expects justice? Why do so many of us have this expectation of disaster?

I think most of us yearn for justice. We just don't want to get what we deserve. Maybe we think that somehow we will escape because we are not as 'bad' as someone else. As I have written before, the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. Matthew 5:45 says, "... so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."

We've seen it all before. The selfish and the giving, the tough and the gentle, the brave and the cowards are all victims together. There is no selection process. Maybe it will happen in my lifetime or yours, maybe not, but we all know it is coming.

History is brimming with cultures much older than ours that went the way all cultures seem to go. No expert knows how extensive it will it be. I wonder, I hope, I pray that we will all respond in faith. I wonder if the church will panic or realize what an opportunity this will be to bring real comfort, truth, and relationship to others.

Seen in the context of so many hurting people around the world, jobless neighbors and folks losing their homes, I think of Dubai the same way I think of many banks.