When the Breadbasket Became a Wasteland

On April 14, 1935 — a day survivors called "Black Sunday" — a wall of dust two thousand feet high rolled across the Oklahoma panhandle, turning midday into midnight. Families huddled under wet sheets, pressing rags against their children's faces, unable to see their own hands.

The Southern Plains had once been America's breadbasket. But years of reckless plowing had stripped away the prairie grass that held the topsoil in place. Farmers knew the land needed rest. They knew the old ways of rotation and fallow. But wheat prices were high, and the soil seemed inexhaustible. So they kept breaking ground until there was nothing left to hold.

When the rains stopped, the earth simply lifted into the sky. Reporter Robert Geiger, standing in the choking darkness of Guymon, Oklahoma, coined the term "Dust Bowl" — a fruitful land made desolate.

Jeremiah saw something eerily similar in his prophetic vision: "I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; at the heavens, and their light was gone." God's people had become "skilled in doing evil" but had forgotten how to do good. They had stripped away every root of faithfulness that held their spiritual lives in place, and now the scorching wind of consequence was bearing down.

Yet even in that devastation, the Almighty whispered a stubborn mercy: "I will not make a full end." The soil can be restored. The roots can grow back. But first, we must stop plowing under what God planted to hold us together.