The covenantal economics of the people of God are quite astonishing. “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother” (Deuteronomy 15:7).

What must you do, to take care of those who have become poor? You must “open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be” (15:8). OK, if it’s a loan instead of an outright gift, your neighbor will have to pay you back. Except for this: “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release” (15:1) – all debts will be canceled, all pledges will be released (15:2).

So if we’re at, say, six and a half years, it means you’ll “lend” him the money, and then we’ll hit the seven year mark, and poof, the debt is remitted and you’re not getting your money back. Better not make the loan then. But no: “Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing” (15:9).

It has to have been a difficult challenge for the people of Israel to put this principle into practice. I expect that they failed at it often, entertaining that mean thought and letting it control their decision. Even so, if they often ended up with a grudging attitude rather than a generous one, that would still put them well ahead of our present-day culture, which so often doesn’t even consider the question. If we think of the poor and homeless at all, we think of them as “those people.” We have lost the biblical perspective that they are our neighbors, and indeed our cousins. And it’s easier to have unworthy thoughts when we have already shrugged their need away as if they were not really part of our family.

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You always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them (Mark 14:7).

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We are all your children, O Lord: yet we hold fast to the unworthy thought that we shouldn’t have to give up any of the blessing you have entrusted to us, to help out our brothers and sisters in poverty. Grant us open hearts and open hands, reaching to lift up all the family, so that everyone has enough.

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