The captions started me thinking about which human needs can rightfully be withheld if they are are not earned.

Is food, for example, something that one must deserve in order to receive?

What about housing?

Or health care?

And these questions inevitably bring up others.

Does having money make a person more worthy of food, housing, and medical care than someone who has none?

Does having millions of dollars that you have earned by the sweat of your brow make you more worthy than someone who has earned only a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand?

Does having millions of dollars that you have not earned, but inherited, make you more worthy than a struggling school teacher with a burdensome debt – or a homeless person with nothing?

Is a person who is unable to work for one reason or another less worthy than someone who holds down two jobs to make ends meet – or than someone who with one relatively unburdensome job earns more than enough to pay for the necessities and the superfluities of life?

When you get right down to it, no one is worthy of God or of God’s gifts. We are all unworthy, but we are all of infinite worth.

Our value lies not in what we possess, or how much we earn, or whether or not we have a job, or whether we are even capable of holding a job. Our worth is not calculated according to whether we are sober or blind drunk, illiterate or highly educated, fortunate or unfortunate in our genetic makeup. The truth is that our value resides in the fact that we are beloved of God, infinitely treasured, infinitely cherished.

Rejoicing in the love of God, we must also be humble, for as Saint Paul says,

What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
(1 Corinthians 4:7)

Prayer for the current financial situation

Lord God, we live in disturbing days:
across the world,
prices rise,
debts increase,
banks collapse,
jobs are taken away,
and fragile security is under threat.

Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:
be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,
and a light in the darkness;
help us receive your gift of peace,
and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

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Prayer from the Book of Proverbs

Two things I ask of thee;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full, and deny thee,
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
or lest I be poor, and steal,
and profane the name of my God.

(Proverbs 7-9, RSV)

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The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.

(Deuteronomy 33:27, RSV)