stylized warfare

Sunday October 2nd, Isaiah 5: 1 I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? God created the world and called all that was created not just good, but very good. God loves this world and has cared for it. The world has not done so well by God however. Waiting for the fruit of justice and caring for one another, it has returned mainly war and greed. This creation has all that is needed to be called once again, very good. What is needed however is for you and I, the worker tenants, to do a little weeding and pruning, starting with our own lives. I was just in the store and while there could overhear all the conversations about the game this weekend. On the radio, discussions about drones in warfare, on another station how funds for green jobs is being cut and fights over disaster relief being held up for government shutdown. What have we become? How easily we are bought off with the shiny trinkets of entertainment and war. My father used to refer to our national obsession of sports as stylized warfare so perhaps one could say that what we are really addicted to is war, in all its manifestations. Is this the fruit we are called to produce? Is this the world created by a loving God and called Good?