Eastertide
April 23, 2015
Scripture Reading: 1 John 3:16-24
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
—1 John 3:16-17
First, I must confess that I am a bit of a nut regarding the need for every family to earn a living wage. The Poverty Level1 is woefully lacking in any real meaning as it does not include many costs of living items that are now routine. It is calculated based on an out-of-date formula tied to the cost of food as the starting point. For a family of one adult and one child the poverty wage is $7 an hour, the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and the living wage is $16.742 in Oklahoma. The Median hourly wage earned in Oklahoma is $15.17 that means that half of the workers in Oklahoma make more than that and half make less. This is all fairly complicated and takes a computer to analyze, but I am sharing it with you and the citations below to raise the issue of poverty in Oklahoma. In 2014, the Poverty Rate in Oklahoma was 16.8% ranking us 34th in the nation. The percentage of people not receiving a living wage is much higher.
You are well acquainted with the problem if your church has a food pantry, provide gas coupons, or helps with utility bills. The steady stream of people just trying to survive until they get their next pay check is daunting. Our local food bank has a program that sends bags of food home with children to eat over the weekend because the school lunch program is their primary source of nutrition. Yet Oklahoma ranks 11th among states’ unemployment rates with a rate of 5.4%. What a difference it would make if all 94.6% of those working earned a living wage.
Figuring out how to pay a living wage is just as complicated as calculating a living wage and will require all of our brightest minds to consider the best means of paying a living wage while maintaining a robust economy. It would be time well spent as it would raise the self-esteem of parents and their children, improve the health of all, cut the costs of public assistance, and probably reduce crime. More importantly, How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Prayer: Lord, enable us to love our neighbors as you have loved us. Amen.
1http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/measure.html
2http://livingwage.mit.edu/states/40
3http://talkpoverty.org/state-year-report/oklahoma-2014-report/ 4http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_ok.htm
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.