Most loving and gracious God, through this pandemic you have opened our
eyes to who truly are essential workers, needed by us in a variety of ways.
Grocery clerks and stockers. Farmers and truck drivers. Janitors and
garbage collectors. Hospital workers who assist Doctors and nursesby washing
sheets, mopping floors, helping patients change
clothes, and all the ways they assist in caring for others. Too many for
us to list. We celebrate them this Labor Day weekend.
Yet too frequently peopoe don’t fully seem them, see their situation.
Too many are treated unjustly- we don’t care for them as you have called all
your people to do throughout time.
Too many are working poor despite working fulltime-struggling to put a
roof over their family’s head, food on the table, clothe their children and all
the necessities we take for granted.
Too many are carefully scheduled so that they don’t reach the threshold
of hours to receive health insurance coverage, or other benefits. So they work
multiple jobs to try to cobble together the equivalent of full-time work.
Frequently they are seen as a means to an end- to someone else’s profit,
to keep prices low on the things we buy.
Again and again they are the last to be thought of, and the first to be
cut.
Open our eyes and hearts to see as you do. Give us the humility to see
where we might be complicit, and change what we can to treat those we celebrate
with this holiday with justice and equity. Give us the courage to make the
decisions and changes needed to treat them with the dignity and fairness they
deserve.
We lift this up in Jesus’ name. Amen.
