Evening Prayer: Economic Justice and the Kingdom

Heavenly Father, Creator of every soul who bears Your image,

Tonight I hold before You the faces I passed today without seeing — the woman counting coins at the grocery checkout, quietly putting back the bread; the man in the parking lot whose résumé sits in a stack no one will read; the child whose zip code has already written half her story before she can hold a pencil.

Genesis tells us You stamped Your own likeness onto human flesh — not onto the wealthy alone, not onto the connected or the credentialed, but onto every life You breathed into being. When You declared Your image-bearers should steward this earth, You handed that mandate to all of us together, not to a privileged few. And so every system that crushes the dignity of someone made in Your likeness is an offense against the Artist who crafted them.

Lord, I confess how easily I mistake comfort for blessing and poverty for failure. Forgive me. Shake me awake. Give me the courage of Nehemiah, who saw broken walls and refused to look away — who traded a king's court for calloused hands and said, "The God of heaven will give us success."