Reap the Whirlwind

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

I chose this verse from the mass readings 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 crime 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 told me that when she interviewed prospective staff, she asked whom they admired and wanted 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 reaped the whirlwind. 

We are made in the image of God and we have intrinsic value. But many of us make gods in our own image. We choose our own ‘moral’ law to follow. We run after our own idols. Whatever it is, money, career, a relationship we 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”. Sayang lang lahat ng pawis (All the sweat is wasted!). 

With God, nothing is impossible. He is a God of hope. If we have “sown the wind” in any way, we can still turn back to Him who is the repairer, the restorer, and He will journey with us and take us to the right path.