My friend Rev. Patrick Heery wrote an article on The Faithful Budget Campaign in Unbound. From the PC (USA) Office of Public Witness you can read this article by Leslie G. Woods. The Faithful Budget Campaign is an interfaith campaign advocating for certain priorities as the US Congress forms its budget including:
-Restoring Economic Opportunity
-Ensuring Adequate Resources for Shared Priorities
-Prioritizing True Human Security
-Meeting Immediate Need
-Accepting Intergenerational Responsibility
-Using the Gifts of Creation Sustainably and Responsibly
-Providing Access to Health Care for All
You can read the entire proposal here. The campaign also supports things that are close to my heart like education, meaningful employment, addressing hunger, and alleviating and preventing homelessness. There is also a focus on women’s health and other issues. I was shocked to learn this week that in some states women can pay up to twice as much as men for health care! Please take a moment and consider signing the preamble of the Faithful Budget Campaign.
There are other litanies and prayers out there for The Faithful Budget Campaign, but today I’d like to offer a prayer specifically for Presbyterian churches who are contemplating the Faithful Budget.
The Faithful Budget
God–swift to love and slow to anger,
everything we have is yours.
Grant us wisdom in our church’s budgeting;
Give our leaders wisdom in budgeting.
The resources we have are gifts from you.
We are called upon to be on the side of the widow and the orphan,
the poor and the marginalized,
the oppressed and the imprisoned,
and to proclaim the recovery of vision and the year of Lord’s favor.
Help us truly be empowered to work towards a Year of Jubilee,
both inside and outside of the church;
For we are called to help create God’s Kin-dom on earth as it is in heaven.
We are not called to judge or condemn
but to love each other, everyone, as Christ has loved us.
We are called to care for the least among us.
Stir up empathy and compassion in us that our budgets at every level may be wise and faithful. Amen.
- Written by Emily Hope Morgan, a millennial pondering questions of the new millennium