Reaping the Whirlwind

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” Hosea 8:7

I chose this verse today because I love how it sounds even if I don’t understand it much. If we sow the Word, we will get a hundred fold harvest. That I understand. 

Sir Arthur Harris, a British Air Marshal in WWII, said in 1942, at the start the bombing campaign against Germany, “The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.” What was the whirlwind but the devastation of huge swaths of Europe and Asia, 80 million deaths including the suicide of Hitler, war crimes trials and prison sentences, and so much more long-lasting change in the world. 

Perhaps we should ask if we are sowing any wind, something with a lot of noise, but with no substance. What are we chasing after? What is important to us? What will be the consequences? My sister who is head of our Human Resources in our family business often tells me that when she interviews prospective staff, she asks whom they admire and want to emulate. Often the dismaying answer is a celebrity who is rich and famous but leads a less than praiseworthy life. Many of the women are single mothers, or living with men not their husbands. They gave up their youth, their morals, their prudence, their future, for love, and they reap the whirlwind. 

We are made in the image of God and we have intrinsic value. But many people make their god in their own image. They choose their own ‘moral’ law to follow. They run after their own idols. Whatever it is, money, youth, a relationship they sacrifice everything for, if God is not at the center, it’s all for nothing. As Psalm 127:1 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain who build it.”