Midweek Mindfulness ~ July 20nd 2022

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Let us take a moment to sit and rest with Jesus, the spring of living water
We offer you a song and a simple prayer

A Song

A Prayer

Take a moment to sit with Jesus in silence

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When you're ready, let's pray the following prayer with Him
If you want a sister or brother to pray with you, click the bar below.
The accompanier will pray the whole prayer with you
You are invited to join in praying the purple italicized words with them

Today we meditate on Amos 8:1-12

A simple prayer for rescue from greed

A poet named Jon Foreman once said,
"When nothing is sacred, there's nothing to lose;
When nothing is sacred, all is consumed"
And I fear he was right.

We exulted in a world
no fuller than our bank accounts,
no deeper than our cheap desires,
no more sacred than we could sell,
Did we know the tower we were building
as we established our brands?
A world with price tags
on anything and everything.
A world scraped clean
and packaged up
with trendy fonts and ads.

But what is the cost of living here, Lord?
What have we really bought and sold, Father?
There are no more Sabbath laws
to stand in our way.
No check to the glistening scales
that balance out the cost / benefit charts
of placing the poor on Mammon's altar.

The same spirit that Amos rebuked
runs unfettered through our markets,
trampling the weak.
A spirit of human greed
that names human beings —
the very image of God our Father —
eyesores and blights to be evicted.
A spirit that whispers
'What could we get away with?'
for progress, for profits, instead of
'What could we offer the world?'

Forgive us for the ways that we feed
this ravenous economic spirit, God.
It devours the poor
without our notice or care,
selling our own brothers and sisters
for silver or gold;
the needy for a pair of sandals
from a distant sweatshop.

Yet how it bites the hand that feeds!
Deliver us from its belly, Father!
Overthrow our rapacious greed!
For we too have been swallowed,
and we need a way out!

Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.

Amen