Floods and wildfires.

The United States is experiencing disasters of biblical “extremes.”  Vast areas of the country are suffering drought, flooding, or wildfires.

Much of the central U.S. is underwater, as the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and many of their tributaries overflow their banks and levees.  Levees have been blown up and flood gates opened, flooding tens of thousands of acres of farmland and hundreds of homes, in order to spare larger towns down river.  All this prompted one Army Corps of Engineers spokesman to comment, “There’s never been a flood of this magnitude on the upper Mississippi” (USA Today, May 5, 2011).  If record snow packs in the Rocky and Cascade Mountains melt too rapidly there could be additional devastating flooding.

Meanwhile, 52 “major” wildfires are burning across the U.S.  So far in 2011, more than 32,000 wildfires of various sizes have burned more than 7,000 square miles—an area larger than the state of Connecticut.  This is about three million acres more than last year.

Forecasts call for continued major drought conditions in western Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, and eastern New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona (Reuters, June 22, 2011).

Long ago God warned the rebellious Israelites, “I also withheld rain from you, when there were still three months to the harvest.  I made it rain on one city, I withheld rain from another city.  One part was rained upon, and where it did not rain the part withered… Yet you have not returned to Me” (Amos 4:7-8).

Regrettably, this is exactly what is happening today, in a nation that is turning away from God and His ways!