Lent 2014
March 8, 2014

 Read: Isaiah 58:1-12 

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 

The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.  

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. – Isaiah 58:9-12 

The first sentence in the scripture quoted above is actually portrayed in the NRSV Bible as the last sentence following the subject covered in the previous eight verses. It is the first part of verse nine and the translators have separated it from the last part of verse nine. Now the entire scripture deals with the same subject that could be tagged “doing justice.” For some reason, I just could not leave that first sentence out. I even thought about repeating it at the end. My perplexity comes from the realization that we need to hear God say “Here I am” at the beginning, in the midst, and at the conclusion of everything we do—particularly when our pursuit is to do justice. Make no mistake when we are talking about the education of our children, we are talking about doing justice!

 I lived in the same farm house for the first 18 years of my life. My brother lives in it now. I cannot even image what it might be like to have to move as many as four times during the school year—much less not having any place to live at all. No child in my school spoke anything but English. In fact, the only people I knew who spoke another language were the grandparents of my classmates. They migrated from Germany during the potato famine in the late 1800’s. Because of the fear associated with the First World War, they would not let their children speak German and thus neither did their grandchildren. I wonder if that still happens. I took my $1.25 lunch money to school each week tied in a cloth handkerchief. Some of the kids did not pay for their lunches when they went through the line, but not many. We did not have anything like special education when I was a child.  Those children were institutionalized.

 Prayer: God of Justice, help us to see the gaps of injustice that impede our children’s learning in school and help us find ways to fill those gaps. Amen.

The identities of students, families, or staff in stories that are shared in the devotions have been altered to protect their privacy. Any similarities between these stories and the experience of others are coincidental. No stories about students, families of students, or staff from Putnam Heights Elementary School are included in any of these devotions.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.