Day 3 – Friday
Exodus 20:17
O God, in your covenant with your people,
whom You were preparing to settle in a land full of promise, You called them
beyond competitive and violent exploitation of their neighbors.
God, we are thousands of miles and many
centuries away from those events. But we want to believe that You have called
and enabled us to be your people. Yet we are full of covetousness! And we do
not know how to extricate our lives from the intricate web of competition and
exploitation that have been woven around us and extended on a grand scale for
our benefit.
Most of the time, we do no physical harm
to our nearest neighbors, and our competition with them is usually limited to
the accumulation of gadgets that we imagine are necessary for our lives.
But we have empowered our nation and our
largest corporations to exploit, extract and confiscate land and resources, all
over the world, in order to make our lives more convenient. Many have suffered
because of this. The earth has suffered because of this. Lands held in common
for thousands of years have been lost. Whole communities of people have been
evicted from their ancestral homes. Many have starved while raising our
sweetest treats.
Somehow, we have convinced
ourselves that we have earned our own way in the world, that we deserve all of
the resources that have been taken from other peoples.
Forgive us for our blindness to the
consequences of our covetousness. Forgive us for our burgeoning greed. Forgive
us for harming so many whom we do not know.
Enlighten us! Transform our lives!
Extricate us from the web of competition and exploitation that brings terror to
so many people. Amen.
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