Child Poverty

God Help Us to End Poverty in Our Time

Next weekend is our 28th Annual National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths® Celebration, “Uniting Hearts and Voices to End Child Poverty,” when people of every religion will reflect on and respond to the sacred texts, teachings, and traditions that call us to end poverty and act with love and justice to ensure all children have what they need not only to survive but thrive and realize their God given potential. We hope you will join us.

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God help us to end poverty in our time.

The poverty of having a child with too little to eat and no place to sleep, no air, sunlight and space to breathe, bask, and grow.

The poverty of watching your child suffer and get sicker and sicker and not knowing what to do or how to get help because you don’t have a car or health insurance.

The poverty of working your fingers to the bone every day taking care of somebody else’s children and neglecting your own and still being unable to pay your bills.

The poverty of having a job which does not let you afford a stable place to live and being terrified you’ll become homeless and lose your children to foster care.

The poverty of losing your job because you cannot find reliable child care or transportation to work.

The poverty of working all your life caring for your children and others and having to start all over again caring for the grandchildren you love.

The poverty of earning a college degree, having children, and taking home $300 a week if you’re lucky.

The poverty of loneliness and isolation and alienation—having no one to call or visit, tell you where to get help, assist you in getting it, or care if you’re living or dead.

The poverty of having too much and sharing too little and having the burden of nothing to carry.

The poverty of convenient blindness and deafness and indifference to others, of emptiness and enslavement to things, drugs, power, violence, and fleeting fame.

The poverty of low aim and paltry purpose, weak will and tiny vision, big meetings and small actions, loud talk and sullen grudging service.

The poverty of believing in nothing, standing for nothing, sharing nothing, sacrificing nothing, struggling for nothing.

The poverty of pride and ingratitude for God’s gifts of life and children and family and freedom and country and not wanting for others what you want for yourself.

The poverty of greed for more and more and more, ignoring, blaming, and exploiting the needy, and taking from the weak to please the non-needy and strong.

The poverty of addiction to drugs, to drink, to work, to self, to the status quo, and to injustice.

The poverty of fear which keeps you from doing the thing you think and know is right.

The poverty of despair and cynicism.

God help us end poverty in our time in all its faces and places, young and old, rural, urban, suburban and small town too, and in every color of humans You have made everywhere.

God please help us to come together and raise our voices to end poverty on Your earth in all its guises—inside and out—physical and spiritual, so that all our and Your children may live the lives that You intend in the world You created for us to share.