Prayerful Economic Justice and the Kingdom

Dear God of Love and Justice,

Leviticus 19:34 commands us: "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt." This is not a suggestion tucked into the margins of Torah — it is a divine imperative rooted in Israel's own memory of suffering. The Reformed tradition calls this common grace: God's provision extends to every person bearing His image, regardless of origin, status, or earning power.

Picture the single mother working the overnight shift at the warehouse, her wages garnished before they ever reach her children's table. Picture the immigrant family pooling their earnings in a cramped apartment, sending money home while scraping by on what remains. God sees these households. He does not look away. And He asks us — His covenant people — whether our economic systems reflect His character or contradict it.

Lord, forgive us when we build prosperity on the backs of the vulnerable and call it blessing. Teach us that biblical justice is not charity from a distance but solidarity up close — the kind that restructures how we hire, how we spend, how we vote. Calvin himself insisted that hoarding wealth while neighbors suffer is a form of theft from God's storehouse.