We may have been made aware of the politics of electricity in Ontario’s most recent response to the tariff threats of the American government. It would effectively double the cost of the average electricity bill in three of the most populous states in the US. That would be an economic worry, and justly so since tariffs are being used as an economic sledgehammer. But what of Israel’s threat to cut off electricity to the Gaza as a message to Hamas to release the remaining hostages? Surely, in a land where industry has effectively shut down because of war, the consequences cannot be about an increasing electrical bill. It turns out that a major secondary effect is more serious: the scarcity of water. Palestine relies on 150 desalination plants across the nation. Water from the country’s acquifiers has been contaminated over the years by mismanagement and misuse to make it unsafe to drink, and the only source remaining is salt water drawn from the Mediterranean. Desalination of this water is the lifeline of the Gaza strip, and a shutdown of electricity means that the only sources of water will dry up. There is dryness in the wilderness of Gaza.
As I read about the plight of this Gaza wilderness, I was drawn to the larger and louder global warnings of the encroachment of the wilderness. Desertification, as it has come to be called, currently swallows up more than 350,000 square kilometres of ariable land every year across the globe. Translated into land mass we can recognize, this would be equivalent to land the size of Poland turned into wilderness in a year. A country the size of Ukraine would be covered by desert in two years. The pace is frightening. Global warming and misuse of the land’s resources are the two top drivers of desertification, and projects such as desalination in Israel to recover ariable land, and the “Great Green Wall” in China and Africa to halt the encroachment of giant foreboding deserts has only put a small dent in the overall pace of destruction. One scientist involved in the seemingly losing battle with the desert commented, “It feels like the world is on fire, and we are using buckets to put it out.” I think of the Bible’s description of God’s judgment of the earth. The rainbow is God’s covenant that He will never again judge the earth by water (Genesis 9:12-17), but Peter tells us that the earth will be judged by “fervent heat” (2 Peter 3:12). Perhaps the encroachment of the desert has more to do with God’s knock on our doors than it has to do with climate science. Perhaps the lack of water in the Gaza has more to do a global call to turn back to God than with a negotiation tactic between Israel and Hamas. Perhaps the doubling of electrical bills is a more a call to run to God than to the comforts and the provisions of an electrical grid. Surely, “perilous times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1). It’s time to run to God.
Just Church
At Just Church, our focus is not the Judgment but the Saviour, Person of Jesus Christ who is the Lord of this earth. “The vision of Just Church is to establish a church in just the way Christ called the church to be – true to His Word, loving Him, loving one another, and loving the lost.”
