Do we all go down together?

I was talking to an 81 year old neighbor the other day. He was coming home from work and commented that he was glad he was 81 and didn't have too much time left in this world becasue something bad is happening to America and it looked to him like things were about to fall apart. Yesterday my neighborhood dry cleaner told me that she's leaving in December. Business is terrible and her landlord jacked up the rent so high she can't pay. Everywhere Rocky and I go businesses, long established ones are closing. My dry cleaner has been here for 20 years!

The financial wise men in the news say that unless our country cuts drasticly and now, Depression is inevitable. Nobody will give, nobody wants to suffer for the whole so the whole will go down together I guess.  I'm reminded of the last lines of the Sherlock Holmes story where he sadly tells Watson that the life of the average Englishman is about to come to an end:

There's an east wind coming, Watson.... such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

— His Last Bow

This all sounds gloomy but God is in charge. If a chastising event comes who can really argue that it wasn't a due punishment? The blood of millions of children cries out for justice.  I suspect that it is only the extraordinary lives of prayer and sacrifice of our cloistered nuns, monks and the unknown saints among us that has stayed God's Hand so far. Pressue turns coal into diamonds and a few of us will be impressive sparklers.  May God's will be done.