Living in the Spirit

June 21, 2023

Scripture Reading:

Jeremiah 20:7-13

O Lord, you have enticed me,
   and I was enticed;
you have overpowered me,
   and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughing-stock all day long;
   everyone mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
   I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’
For the word of the Lord has become for me
   a reproach and derision all day long.
If I say, ‘I will not mention him,
   or speak any more in his name’,
then within me there is something like a burning fire
   shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in,
   and I cannot. –Jeremiah 20:7-10

I spend much of my time involved in advocacy. I understand the frustration that Jeremiah describes, although I have never experienced the challenges that he faced. What bothers me most is when people vote against their best interests because they are stirred up by issues that have little or no impact on their lives. In Oklahoma, it took ten years and an initiative petition to bring Medicaid expansion to our state. Over 300,000 people who had no health coverage gained it. That does impact all of us. People without good routine health care when they get really sick end up in the emergency room, often in the final stages of cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, which could have been treated if identified earlier at a much lower cost.  According to the CDC, Oklahoma persistently ranks among the states with the worst rates (40th) of maternal deaths in the U.S. Between 2017-2019; the Oklahoma maternal mortality rate was 23.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Prayer: Lord, open our eyes so that we can see the best ways to love one another as you have called us to do and, in so doing, make a better world for all of us. Amen.

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 America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.