Higher prices on essential items disproportionately affect families with lower incomes more than those with higher incomes. While most of us can put off buying things we can do without, many essentials cannot be delayed for very long. Certainly not long enough for the trade war levied against the rest of the world to end.
Families living at or below the poverty level feel the effects most, as essentials like food and fuel become increasingly inaccessible, making survival more difficult. The impact is even more severe for children as meals become less frequent, education slips further away, and medical care becomes a luxury many families can’t afford.
Childhood poverty is a persistent reminder that the most vulnerable, who also aren’t invited to weigh in on policies affecting them, feel the impact first and the hardest. The U.S. has made some progress since the last century, but even this meager progress is at risk.
Head Start was one of numerous programs targeted for elimination. Fortunately, the administration gave in to public pressure and kept it in the current budget proposal. The pressure needs to stay on to protect the most vulnerable of us.
In our reading this week from our companion book, Benji awoke to see that the entire sea was glowing. In places, it looked like a million small light bulbs were illuminating the water. The ocean was completely calm and looked like a massive sheet of glowing glass. It was so beautiful that Benji wondered if he had died and was seeing heaven.
“At that moment,” Benji shared, “I sensed my insignificance more than at any other moment in my life.” Jean Philippe asked Benji if he thought the stranger had anything to do with creating what they experienced. “Something must have,” Jean Philippe whispered, “Something magnificent.”
The next morning, Jean Philippe was not in the lifeboat. In frustration, Benji asked the stranger why he hadn’t stopped him. “Why didn’t you?” the stranger responded.
The group of survivors had dwindled to four. There was the little girl, Alice, the stranger, Jason Lambert, who owned the Galaxy, and the stranger.
One morning, Benji awoke to Jason Lambert with a knife in his hand and screaming at the stranger, “Do something, you IDIOT! Call for HELP!” “I am your help, Jason Lambert,” the stranger calmly responded, “Come to me.” It became clear that the effects of drinking seawater had pushed Jason Lambert over the edge.
In a matter of seconds, both the stranger and Jason Lambert were in the water and dead. Only Alice and Benji remained alive in the lifeboat.
Benji had noticed how Alice seemed to stay close to the stranger, as if she believed he would protect her. It reminded him of a time when their priest shared how Jesus loved the children and that the kingdom of Heaven belonged to them. His mother rubbed his shoulders. At that moment, Benji felt sheltered from all evil.
The priest Benji and his mom heard that day could have read from any of the three synoptic gospels. They each share a story about a time when Jesus talked about the importance of children. And that we adults need to have faith more like the faith a child has.
“There is no faith like the faith of a child,” Benji shared in his journal, “I haven’t got the heart to tell Alice it’s misplaced.”
The death of the stranger, at the hands of Jason Lambert, seemed to confirm the doubts Benji had about the stranger’s claim to be the Lord. Surely, he must also have felt a loss of hope with the possibility that the Lord was with them on the lifeboat now gone.
Remember this! Whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.
Luke 18:15-17
Children haven’t experienced the disappointments most adults have experienced. The loss of loved ones and other tragedies leave us wondering why God allows so much suffering.
When Jesus said we should have faith like a child, He was speaking to people when, culturally, children didn’t have the status most children have today. This is hard for me to imagine. And given how much my children matter to me, I can’t help but want all children to be loved and cared for.
Nevertheless, it’s also hard for any of us to put enough distance between our faith and past experiences to reach the same level of trust that a child puts in persons they count on. Unable to take care of their needs on their own, even the most skeptical children depend on adults for safety and their essential needs.
However, in many families, even providing the essentials is a struggle.
What happens next in our companion book is a cliffhanger beckoning us to read on. “They’re all gone,” Benji said to Alice!” The little girl who hadn’t spoken until then replied. “I am the Lord. And I will never leave you.”
Stay tuned!
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This is a reminder that we publish a weekly newsletter called the Circuit Rider. You can request this publication by email. Send a request to FlintAsburyUMC@gmail.com or let us know when you send a message through our website. We post an archive of past editions on our website under Connect – choose Newsletters.
Pastor Tommy
Our series was inspired by Mitch Albom. The Stranger in the Lifeboat. New York: HarperCollins, 2021.