What if we had to open our own personal landfills in our backyards and watch our children play in our filthy garbage? What if the girl who worked sixteen hour days to sew our clothes did this in our living room while we tried to watch tv? What if hungry children were required to sit at our dinner tables next to our own children and were not allowed to eat? What if we had to walk down the aisles of the grocery store next to the farmer who could barely afford to feed his own family? What if we had to keep our family cat or dog in a dark cage with 20,000 other animals? What if gas cost $200 a gallon?

I imagine we’d all start living life in a completely new way if we had to live with the uncomfortable consequences of our actions…or would we?

Because someday, they’re going to have to use our pristine backyards for our trash because there won’t be any place left.

And the girl who made your jeans? She’s still in another country, but you won’t be able to afford those jeans…you’ve lost your job because your company found someone who will do your work for $2 a day too.

The hungry children at the dinner table will be your children, and the family farmer is already walking next to you at the grocery store—you just don’t recognize him because he had to get a job at a factory to make ends meet.

The idea of keeping 20,000 animals in a dark cage sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But where did those chicken breasts come from that you served for supper?

And the $200 a gallon gas? I don’t know if it will ever get that high, but would it matter? Would you just say, “Oh well…that’s what gas costs” and fill up your gas tank again?

Or would you change something?

America is a country with an appetite that will not be satisfied. Living a sustainable life and creating a sustainable culture is a matter of counting the cost of our actions, discerning a need from a want and a right from a privilege, and consuming less—instead of just finding alternative ways of doing the same things. Please get me on this: it’s not just the ways, it’s the things. It’s not just the fuel, it’s the miles, the cars. It’s not just the sweatshop labor, it’s the size of our wardrobes. It’s not just the way the chickens are raised, it’s the fact that we think we deserve meat at each meal (or coffee or tea or sugar or tomatoes in December).

We have perverted the sacred and made it common, and we have plundered the once abundant treasures of God’s holy creation. We have made ourselves little gods on earth and taken it all for ourselves, forgetting that it was given to us in the beginning, to work for and care for. This post isn’t a rallying cry against agribusiness or Wal-Mart or GM. Those things are only symptoms of the biggest problem, which is the greed in my heart. I take more than I need, I am lazy and don’t want to work for my food and clothing. I turn my head when I see hunger and I only become frustrated at ignorance. The Light I need does not come from a compact fluorescent light bulb and my sins are too heavy to carry in a cloth shopping bag. My prescription for wellness isn’t a gallon of ethanol, but a trust in God’s plan for scale, order, and perfect provision and redemption.

If I had one post left, this is what it would say. These are the things that are on my heart and in my conversations with God, the things I want to share with you. I cannot point a finger of accusation at anybody but myself; I cannot help you with your speck until the plank is out of my own eye, until Jesus has restored my vision. He has done a marvelous work already, but I will not be made whole until the day I am with Him. I can only offer to you my hand in the journey, and if I can point a finger, it is pointed toward the Christ, the King of Kings. And the cry of my heart: “Go– follow Him!”

Oh Lord, let me live as You would have me! Let me trust in You alone! Let me remember and keep Your commands to love You with all my heart, my soul, my might, and to love my earthly neighbors as I love my self. Forgive me for taking lightly the things You say, for trusting in my own riches, for taking more than I need without regard for the other people and things You’ve created. I praise You for Your long suffering, Your mercy, the grace You give me that I may give to others. You are a great God, greater than the pollution in my soul, the greed in my heart– how much greater than the pollution on the earth and the greed I act out in my daily life! Let my heart be cleansed, let my life be Yours. Let the earth be cleansed, let the earth be Yours. I love You.