Vanity? Here's what vanity is...
Illustration
Vanity? Here's what vanity is: toiling with such shortsightedness that I want all the benefits and results for myself, not leaving anything for my children or for the generations beyond them.
Out here in the northern plains we still suffer from the shortsightedness of those who came before us, stripping the land of all the trees so that crops could be planted in straight lines as far as the eye could see. The wind blows over this flat, barren expanse and carries topsoil with it that can never be replaced. As with so many other stories in the history of humankind, the quest for bigger and fasten dollars blinds us to the need for conserving our resources for future generations. Vanity!
Did we learn a lesson from the devastating "dust bowl" of the 1930s? Of course not, because we're just as vain. Our church is located on the edge of town with picturesque fields of wheat and sugar beets just outside my office window. There are those in our area who are advocates of minimum tillage to prevent erosion. Yet, at the end of the harvest these fields are tilled into such fine powder that the topsoil blows all winter long. There are times when visibility is reduced to one-tenth of a mile due to blowing dirt. That's vanity!
--Kaul
Out here in the northern plains we still suffer from the shortsightedness of those who came before us, stripping the land of all the trees so that crops could be planted in straight lines as far as the eye could see. The wind blows over this flat, barren expanse and carries topsoil with it that can never be replaced. As with so many other stories in the history of humankind, the quest for bigger and fasten dollars blinds us to the need for conserving our resources for future generations. Vanity!
Did we learn a lesson from the devastating "dust bowl" of the 1930s? Of course not, because we're just as vain. Our church is located on the edge of town with picturesque fields of wheat and sugar beets just outside my office window. There are those in our area who are advocates of minimum tillage to prevent erosion. Yet, at the end of the harvest these fields are tilled into such fine powder that the topsoil blows all winter long. There are times when visibility is reduced to one-tenth of a mile due to blowing dirt. That's vanity!
--Kaul
