Good Day, God!
I was surprised to find an article about Woody Guthrie in Christianity Today! Woody Guthrie? But, having the author, Jeremy V. Jones, compare Woody to a prophet made a certain amount of sense — once I thought about it.
Much as we’d like to forget it, God, Your Prophets came down pretty hard on the Rich and Powerful. And Woody wasn’t too happy with them either.
He wrote a lot of his songs during the Great Depression. He wrote about the poor — about the jobless and those working for very little money. And, as Jones pointed out, here we are in the worst economic times since the Great Depression. We still have the jobless. We still have the “working poor.”
How DO we bring Capital and Labor together, God? How can we avoid economic BUBBLES that are fed by greed and folks who just want to “game the system?” How can entrepreneurs be encouraged and workers be invited to participate together in our economy? How can we work hard at working together?
These are useful questions, God. But not easy ones. I confess that I’d rather turn aside and not think about them. Maybe that was why I was so happy to read the article in Christianity Today. I know that I need to listen to the prophetic voices who caution us to care deeply about our fellow humans.
The article in Christianity Today ended with a marvelous quote from one of Woody’s songs, The Hoping Machine: “Don’t lose your grip on life and that means / Don’t let any earthly calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine / Out of order.”
Please, God, fill us with HOPE. And help us keep on hoping — so we can keep on working together for better solutions.
Story teller,
A Moment with God 
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