A land flowing with milk and honey

A Chinese said to me that how much blessed America is for being a land flowing with milk and honey, and how unlucky China is by not being such a land. I was stunned and asked, "How could a place not being a land flowing with milk and honey but have raised more than a billion people?"

In Bible, it is said that the holy land WAS a land flowing with milk and honey when God promised it to Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Moses. It is no longer now. But the people in the land is still blessed. A Muslim friend of mine once told me how much blessed he felt being a Muslim since God give the Muslim world most of the oil fields in the world. And to Israel, my Muslim friend said, "God left them nothing." (They have no oil, basically it's the meaning.) "Well," I smiled, "surely you are blessed. But God gave Israel people nothing else but HIMSELF."

What is truly a land flowing with milk and honey? It is not about how rich, productive, or geographically superior the land is. It is about how the people who live in the land are. If the people are honest, industrious, and kind to each other, the land flows milk and honey despite of its natural geography. On the contrary, a land by nature flowing milk and honey could become a desert.