A Prayer in a Time of Crisis

        Abundant God, we bring to you our deep concern for our neighbors who are at risk of hunger and food insecurity. Around fourteen percent of the people of Berks County—close to 60,000 people—rely on SNAP benefits to feed their families. If the government shutdown is not resolved by the end of this week, starting on Saturday these families will be without this essential nutrition assistance program. While our leaders dither and refuse to work together for the common good, children go hungry.

        SNAP, we know, is not a perfect solution to hunger. The program is vulnerable to fraud (though not nearly as much as some would lead us to believe), and the funding is limited, so that many people find that there is too much month left at the end of the money. And because processed foods are generally cheaper than fresh fruits and vegetables, people on SNAP often can’t make the most nutritious choices, causing their health to suffer. We pray for changes that would allow even poor people to eat healthy food.

        While SNAP is not a perfect solution, a perfect solution is out there. If we were to commit ourselves to a life of sharing, everyone could have sufficient food, shelter, and access to health care. It’s a scandal, God, that a country led by so many persons who claim to worship you and follow Jesus could accept with no apparent qualms a situation in which our neighbors live on the streets or can’t afford to see a doctor or have to skip meals so their children can eat. Unrestrained capitalism is a metastasizing cancer on the body politic. Our devotion to free markets and conspicuous consumption outweighs our care for the people with whom Jesus most closely identifies. He says that he may most reliably be found among the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned, but our culture is more enamored with billionaires and celebrities. We would rather seek our own comfort and bet on football than spend time with Jesus’s brothers and sisters. Forgive us, God.

        Change our hearts. Fill us with compassion. Bring us into conformity with the image of your Son, and encourage us to buck the system that wants us to “be a consumer and not a dissident,” as Rich Mullins once sang. Make us holy dissidents, troublemakers for justice, rabble-rousers for peace. Do not let us be complacent in the face of greed or injustice; rather, send us out into the streets, the alleyways, and the halls of power with a message from you: that you are not pleased with shepherds who prey on the flocks they are supposed to tend. Before long, we trust, there will be an accounting, a day of reckoning when the standard for judgment will not be how many terms in Congress you served, or how many billions you amassed, or how much power you wielded, but instead will be based on how you conducted yourself when no one was looking. The standard for judgment will be what you did with your opportunities to bring a little light into a dark corner of the world. It will be how well you loved your neighbor as yourself.

        Forgive us. Restore our humanity. Open our eyes to see the needs around us, and help us both to serve the needy ones and to take actions that will eliminate that neediness. May all your children eat as well as we do, and may they have the dignity of those who have been created in your image. We ask all this in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.