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The Mess of Money
Hear this, you that trample on the needy, saying, “When will the sabbath be over so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit by selling the sweepings of the wheat.” The Lord will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. – Amos 8:4-6, 10a (abridged)
Money is fake. (Hear me out.) It’s an imaginary language we invented to communicate our needs and desires and their respective values.
Subsequently, economics is a series of fictional stories we’ve conjured to assign social purpose to the value of need and the value of desire, stories that manage our collective expectation of wellbeing.
Stories like: your credit score is a measure of your worth. Stories like: healthy, fresh foods are bougie. Stories like: you should be grateful to have a mere 10 days of PTO each year. Stories like: everyone should have a side hustle to make ends meet. Stories like: an executive is more valuable than a teacher. Stories like: you can become a millionaire if you just give up your morning coffee.
Stories like: if we just squeeze more value out of a limited quantity and more labor out of fewer workers, our bottom line will improve. Just shrink the dry measure of the ephah, as they were doing in the time of Amos, dilute the contents of the ephah with some milling dust from the wheat, and then increase its price tag by a few shekels.
Bottom lines make a mess of relational lines. Fake stories about value make a mess of the ancient story of holy value. Nevertheless, our days are shaped by these fictional stories, and our bottom lines are very real. The tale entitled, “Economics,” is one in which we all take part.
Money may be a reality of life, but that doesn’t mean money tells the true story of life. “Seek me and live,” God says in Amos. In the Holy One is our life’s value and wellbeing.
Prayer: God almighty, this existence of ours is messy. Daily demands and social systems so often conflict with the truth of your love. Let me believe the story of love above all else.
cross-posted with the UCC Daily Devotional
About Those Christmas Lights
Thus says the Lord: Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit. – Jeremiah 31:2a, 4b-5 (NRSV)
I love Christmas lights. String them across your windows on the day after Thanksgiving—fabulous! Weave them through trees and bushes in your yard on the day after Halloween, even—delightful!
Bring on the small white lights, twinkling through long winter nights. Let there be colorful bulbs wrapped around gates and fences, blazing like commercialized Northern Lights. Shine a light on upside-down Santa Claus legs in the chimney. Turn on the bright nose of a blow-up Rudolph. Set up a glowing display of candy canes or penguins or baby Jesuses. I’m here for it!
But please, no matter how early you indulge in the joyful glow of Christmas, I’m begging you now: don’t be in a rush to put away all that bright plastic immediately after December 25th. Let the light linger. Allow a bit of garish decor to carry the joy of Christmas into January. Perhaps even February.
Because I, for one, continue to need beacons of hope long after the Christmas presents have been put away. I continue to long for a glimmer of wonder long after the Christmas tree has dropped all its needles and foiled the vacuum’s best efforts.
The good news that leads us like a reindeer’s red nose through Advent; the good news that delivers extravagant joy at Christmas; that same good news does not dim with the dawning of December 26th. That same good news is no less captivating, no less ostentatious, no less foolish and fun just because the stores end their holiday sales.
Keep those Christmas lights burning a little longer this year, remembering that the good news is like a long and loud tambourine dance, an outrageously abundant feast, and a bright light of love that outshines every grief and injustice.
Prayer: Keep the lamp within my soul trimmed and burning, O Faithful God, so that my joy in your love overflows.
cross-posted with the UCC Daily Devotional
Kissing Calves
Idols of silver [are] made according to their understanding. “Sacrifice to these,” they say. People are kissing calves! Therefore they shall be like the morning mist or like the dew that goes away early. - Hosea 13:2-3 (NRSV, abridged) I was not raised in a Christian...
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We have done our best, O God. Well, not our best. Sometimes not even a half-hearted attempt at "best." But we have done ... something ... and of course it was never going to last because time is finite and people are too, but, O God! We didn't prepare for death when...
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Thirty sparrows clamor around the bird feeder while a squirrel plots its route to the same, and I wonder if this is faithfulness: to know what is needed and to crave it solely. Give us this day our daily bread, for you will give what is good, O God. Now let us be...
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We thought it was a gift, the basket of summer fruit: strawberries red as a rose, peaches wet as the dew, watermelons sweet as your love. But no, God. The basket was a judgment of all we have taken for granted and all we have coveted for ourselves. We boast in what we...
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A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning Cush, a Benjaminite. “O Lord my God, in you I take refuge. If I have plundered my foe without cause, then let the enemy pursue and overtake me.” - Psalm 7 excerpts (NRSV) Shiggaion: a drunken reel, a wildly...
If Only
if only, my god, the river of healing left its banks to come heal us where we stand with our feet stuck in the mud if only, my god, the letter of peace penned itself to the angry mobs and violent landlords who worship cruelty if only, my god, the silver coins and gold...
Of Gods and Kings
King Manasseh did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh. He built altars for all the host of heaven and served them. He made his son pass through fire. He practiced soothsaying and dealt with wizards. He set a carved image of Asherah in the house of Yahweh, provoking...
I Swear to God
Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years. Abraham said to the oldest servant of his house, “Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will get a wife for my son Isaac.” - Genesis 24:1-4 abbreviated...
Just for Us
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” – Acts 11:1-3...
