A friend posted a link to an article in an American Christian paper. I read it out of curiosity, and found that it contained a somewhat interesting discussion about the present economical crisis and the texts by Isaiah (Jesaja) and other prophets. In times when life was easy, the prophets told the people to worry and grief, but in times of hardship, they talked of comfort and hope for the future. The author – Andy Crouch – in the article makes critical comments about (American) christians of today, as in the following example:

“We are a terrifyingly unserious people, our heads buzzing with trivia and noise. This is more true, if anything, of American Christians than the rest of our country. The stark contrast between what I experience among Christians anywhere else in the world—and not just the “Third World,” because Canada and Germany and Britain and Singapore come to mind as quickly as Uganda and India—and American Christians is astonishing. We are preoccupied with fads intellectual, theological, technological, and sartorial. Vanishingly few of us have any serious discipline of silence, solitude, study, and fasting. We have, in the short run, very little to offer our culture, because we live in the short run.
I am not hopeful because I think life is going to get easier in America. I am hopeful because I think it is going to get harder, and in a very good way. And I am hopeful because I think this means my children and grandchildren will live in a deeply and truly better world than I would have thought possible a few years ago.”