Edited by Jim McCrory, Sunday 22 March 2026 at 09:14
The Garden After the Scuffle
I read this week that a missile had struck a vast gas complex in the Gulf; an installation so large it helps power whole regions, now burning, its output cut, its value counted in 36 billion dollars.
It is hard to picture what that really means. The reports speak in figures, percentages of supply lost, years of disruption, markets shifting in response. But behind those measurements there is something more physical: metal twisted by heat, pipelines ruptured, the long preparation of engineers and workers undone in a few moments.
I tried, for a while, to imagine that same amount of wealth in another form, not as infrastructure, but as possibility. What could be built instead of broken. What might have been made steady. It didn’t settle easily. The mind keeps returning to the image of destruction, because it is simpler, more immediate.
Perhaps that is something about us.
The simile is apt man’s striving for power is like two groups of baboons in the garden fighting for a banana and ruining the garden in the process. Afterwards, there was very little left worth taking.
It is difficult not to think of that scene when reading about these events. Not because the comparison is exact, but because the pattern feels familiar. A resource is there—valuable, limited, desired. Groups gather around it. Each move is justified by the one before. And in the struggle, the thing itself is damaged, sometimes beyond repair.
The ground suffers as much as the prize.
What unsettles me is not only the scale of it, but the repetition. This is not new. Different places, different names, but the same underlying motion. Effort directed toward control rather than care. Energy spent in contest rather than in preservation. The outcome rarely surprises, yet it continues.
If I think back to the idea of that vast sum of money—what it could do if directed differently—it begins to feel almost like an alternative history that never quite happens. Instead of repairing what is fragile, we seem drawn to test its limits. Instead of maintaining what sustains us, we place it in the path of conflict.
There is a line, quiet but persistent, that comes to mind from the last book of the Bible. It speaks of a time when those who ruin the earth will themselves be brought to ruin. Not as a dramatic flourish, but as a kind of reckoning that mirrors the damage done.
I don’t know exactly how that unfolds. It isn’t described in practical terms. But the idea itself lingers. That there is a point at which the cost of what we are doing returns to us—not symbolically, but directly.
When I think again of the burned-out structures in the Gulf, the interrupted flow of energy, the careful work undone, it does not feel distant. It feels immediate, almost ordinary. Another entry in a long pattern.
And yet, the contrast remains. The same resources that are fought over could, in another direction, be used to steady lives, to maintain what is already fragile. The difference between those paths is not technical. It is something quieter, harder to define.
Perhaps it comes down to what we are willing to leave intact.
The baboons, after their struggle, moved on. The ground remained marked where they had been. No one returned to repair it.
We, at least, are capable of noticing the damage. Whether that leads to anything different is less certain. And I pray, “Let your Kingdom come and may Your will be done here on earth.
For You have wielded Your great power and have begun Your reign. The nations have raged against You, but Your wrath has finally come. It is now time to judge all of the dead, To give a just reward to Your servants, the prophets, and to the saints and all who honor Your name, both the small and the great, And to destroy those who cause destruction to the earth.
Today’s Thought: The Garden After the Scuffle
The Garden After the Scuffle
I read this week that a missile had struck a vast gas complex in the Gulf; an installation so large it helps power whole regions, now burning, its output cut, its value counted in 36 billion dollars.
It is hard to picture what that really means. The reports speak in figures, percentages of supply lost, years of disruption, markets shifting in response. But behind those measurements there is something more physical: metal twisted by heat, pipelines ruptured, the long preparation of engineers and workers undone in a few moments.
I tried, for a while, to imagine that same amount of wealth in another form, not as infrastructure, but as possibility. What could be built instead of broken. What might have been made steady. It didn’t settle easily. The mind keeps returning to the image of destruction, because it is simpler, more immediate.
Perhaps that is something about us.
The simile is apt man’s striving for power is like two groups of baboons in the garden fighting for a banana and ruining the garden in the process. Afterwards, there was very little left worth taking.
It is difficult not to think of that scene when reading about these events. Not because the comparison is exact, but because the pattern feels familiar. A resource is there—valuable, limited, desired. Groups gather around it. Each move is justified by the one before. And in the struggle, the thing itself is damaged, sometimes beyond repair.
The ground suffers as much as the prize.
What unsettles me is not only the scale of it, but the repetition. This is not new. Different places, different names, but the same underlying motion. Effort directed toward control rather than care. Energy spent in contest rather than in preservation. The outcome rarely surprises, yet it continues.
If I think back to the idea of that vast sum of money—what it could do if directed differently—it begins to feel almost like an alternative history that never quite happens. Instead of repairing what is fragile, we seem drawn to test its limits. Instead of maintaining what sustains us, we place it in the path of conflict.
There is a line, quiet but persistent, that comes to mind from the last book of the Bible. It speaks of a time when those who ruin the earth will themselves be brought to ruin. Not as a dramatic flourish, but as a kind of reckoning that mirrors the damage done.
I don’t know exactly how that unfolds. It isn’t described in practical terms. But the idea itself lingers. That there is a point at which the cost of what we are doing returns to us—not symbolically, but directly.
When I think again of the burned-out structures in the Gulf, the interrupted flow of energy, the careful work undone, it does not feel distant. It feels immediate, almost ordinary. Another entry in a long pattern.
And yet, the contrast remains. The same resources that are fought over could, in another direction, be used to steady lives, to maintain what is already fragile. The difference between those paths is not technical. It is something quieter, harder to define.
Perhaps it comes down to what we are willing to leave intact.
The baboons, after their struggle, moved on. The ground remained marked where they had been. No one returned to repair it.
We, at least, are capable of noticing the damage. Whether that leads to anything different is less certain. And I pray, “Let your Kingdom come and may Your will be done here on earth.
For You have wielded Your great power
and have begun Your reign.
The nations have raged against You,
but Your wrath has finally come.
It is now time to judge all of the dead,
To give a just reward to Your servants, the prophets,
and to the saints and all who honor Your name,
both the small and the great,
And to destroy those who cause destruction to the earth.
Revelation 11:17,18.
The Voice Bible
Reference: The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.