February 22, 2025 - Deuteronomy 15-18

The Sabbatical Year.  How amazing and gracious is our God!  He not only, in miraculous ways, provided for Israel he also, in their everyday living gave instructions that would provide for all the people, including the indebted and the poor:  “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. 2 And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed. . . . There will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess. . . . The Lord your God will bless you, as he promised you” (15:1-11).   The people were to look after their own.  Jesus, time and time again, instructed his disciples to care for the poor and downtrodden and, in his ministry, showed them how to do that.  We must do the same.

Lord, lead the way the Saviour went,

By lane and cell obscure,

And let love’s treasures still be spent,

Like His, upon the poor:

Like Him, through scenes of deep distress,

Who bore the world’s sad weight,

We, in their crowded loneliness,

Would seek the desolate.

For Thou hast placed us side by side,

In this wide world of ill,

And, that Thy followers may be tried,

The poor are with us still.

Mean are all offerings we can make.

But Thou hast taught us, Lord,

If given for the Saviour’s sake,

They lose not their reward.   -- William Croswell (1831)