I've seen other articles since I posted the above, which say we probably
won't feel it very much as a shortage, at least not right away. We will,
however, feel the price crunch and that will affect Americans on the
lower end of the economic scale who are already barely making ends
meet. True, most of us would be better off eating less for a while
anyway.

But I do see this as part of a growing trend. Maybe I'm wrong about
that, but this is how it goes: 9/11 already made a dent in the
economy by forcing airlines into bankruptcy, a situation which has
been evolving over time. Katrina is what started pushing the price of
oil up and up, which has been pushing food prices up, also getting
worse over time. The nation has been paying out enormous sums of
disaster relief money for what seems to be a string of unusually
severe natural disasters over the last few years, disasters of all
kinds from hurricanes to wildfires to tornadoes to floods. Relief is
still available, but always there are some who fall through the cracks
anyway, and at some point if the trend continues the bank that
finances the relief simply has to break.

It's just a matter of time as long as we continue as a nation on our
downhill slide into paganism and immorality. Surely as Christians we
know that God is behind all these events, surely we know these are
ways He brings judgment against nations, surely we know that America
deserves judgment for a disgraceful list of government-sponsored sins
that have been accumulating for decades now. Surely we know that the
only way to prevent complete desolation is national repentance. Is it
happening? Is it even happening in the churches where of all places
it should be happening? Where's the sackcloth and ashes, the weeks of
corporate humbling before God in repentance and pleading for the
nation? In the past America actually had some Presidents who called
for times of fasting and prayer. Churches that wanted God to come
down and revive the Christian life of their communities used to pray
through the night for months. Now the churches won't do it for half a
day, and individually we're a sad lot when it comes to that kind of
discipline, and here I'm mostly speaking for myself and SO wanting a
spiritual strength I continually fail to muster.

So as I see it, we may not necessarily be facing a sudden crisis
(although I'm not completely sure of that), but we MUST be facing a
gradual tightening of the vise that we will most likely feel when it's
too late.