Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
The massive Latino rallies are driving people who love the Bible to re-read James 5: “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you [these are words we don’t like to read]. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire.” The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday how Dave Penry, a landscape business owner who has supported Senate deliberations in April, pays his Mexican-born laborers double the minimum wage and the same health-care he receives. “It’s very frustrating to hear people say I’m some cheap jerk who’s getting rich off the backs of people,” he says. Penry doesn’t want that condemnation on himself that James speaks of! Yet, Ana Avendano, AFL-CEO associate general counsel in
Claudia Smith, attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, admits, “We want nannies. We want landscapers,” and cheap food. “There’s not a single person who doesn’t benefit from this in some way.”
That must include you and me. Every time we buy fruit and vegetables in the market we are involving ourselves somehow in James 5. Americans don’t want these jobs! If we want to be clear as Dave Penry does, we recognize that there is a portion of the strawberries we have bought cheap that we don’t deserve.
One who discerns at least something of the economic significance of the cross of Christ discerns a deeper recognition: we don’t deserve any of what we have—not even our next breath. Only the biblical teaching of the cosmic Day of Atonement in which we are now living just prior to the second coming of Christ can put our modern living in perspective, in relation to the cross of Christ. Says the holy Word, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.... Having food and raiment let us therewith be content” (1 Tim. 6:6-8). Paul’s word for “raiment” is skepasma in the Greek, which definitely does not mean Macy’s creations; it means literally “roofing,” anything that covers nakedness. His word for food is diatrophe, literally, “sufficient sustenance,” hardly gourmet. “Therewith be content”—? We have some important learning to do.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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