Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 10 through 15:
10 When you make your neighbor a loan of any kind, you shall not go into the house to take the pledge. 11 You shall wait outside, while the person to whom you are making the loan brings the pledge out to you. 12 If the person is poor, you shall not sleep in the garment given you as the pledge. 13 You shall give the pledge back by sunset, so that your neighbor may sleep in the cloak and bless you; and it will be to your credit before the Lord your God.
14 You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. 15 You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.
The COVID-19 crisis is exposing the vast fragility of our entire economic framework as it relies so heavily on cheap labor. After years (decades?) of depressed wages which kept laborers from financial robustness, and then the stoppage of work altogether, what happens to those people?
Today’s Lesson shows the Biblical concern for the well-being of the laborer and borrower. There is obligation the employer and the lender each take on for the care and responsibility of the workers, the borrowers, and the whole community at-large.
The current crisis we are in has exposed so much of the fragility of the entire national and international economy. When you’re competing against a place like China for production, then you’re tempted to exploit your workers just like they do. And who cares if they lose their shirts in the meantime?
But now we will have to pay the piper. This is looking like giant governmental bailouts because we can’t afford for everybody to lose their shirts at the same time. And though that will eventually mean more taxes for a lot of people, it will also mean it’s our chance to truly see that we are a community — our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and our workers’ kindred, and should have been all along.
NOTE: We’re reading the whole Bible through this year. Tomorrow’s Lesson will come from Deuteronomy chapters 28 and 29.
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