Lent
February 29, 2016

Scripture Reading: Joshua 5:9-12

While the Israelites were encamped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year. –Joshua 1-12

It is a momentous event to witness a person, family, or whole segment of society move from dependence to self-sufficiency. It usually does not come easily and often accompanies a wide array of emotions including regrets from the past and hopes for the future. We experience a small taste of it when we celebrate a family’s acceptance of the keys to their new Habitat House.

Many years ago when I worked as a social worker with persons receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, I walked the long journey with one mother who had become a mother too soon. When I met her she had three stair-step children all under the age of five and a long-gone husband. She had not completed high school and had no work experience. She was very intelligent, passed the GED test without any pre-study. She also wanted the best for her children but had never experienced that kind of love herself. She was fearful she would do something or everything wrong. We call it low self-esteem. I think I was the first person who had ever told her she was smart as that was not an important asset in her upbringing. She got a job at a new factory being opened in her home town, started at the bottom and quickly earned her self-sufficiency badge. I closed her case but a few months later she called me in a panic. She had been rushed to the hospital with appendicitis. She thought she was going to lose everything she had gained. I visited her the next day at the hospital where I was greeted with a joy-filled, tearful smile. Next to her bed was a bright bouquet of flowers from her co-workers. The births of all three of her children had been paid for through the Medicaid program. She had become use to the least treatment possible. She was amazed at the different way she was treated because of the wonders of her work related insurance and that bouquet of flowers.

We do need to help people in need to have the basics of life and more than anything else we need to enable them to become self-sufficient like those Israelites in our scripture today who cooked their first meal out of their own crops and no longer needed the manna from heaven.

Prayer: Lord, help us create a world where everyone has enough and no one has low self-esteem. 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 American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.