Crisis on the Dish Line
Theme of the Week: Go Ahead, Push Your Values
Thursday, January 22, 2009
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: The wages you held back cry out against you. The cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty (James 5:4). Bonus Reading: Deuteronomy 24:14-15
One day I went to work and Ellie wasn't there," my friend Bob, a junior at a prestigious East Coast university, was telling me. He worked on the dish line to make a few extra dollars to help with car payments. Ellie wasn't a student but had been in food services at the school for over 20 years. "So I asked around," he said, "and found out that Ellie'd had a heart attack and couldn't work anymore. What was worse, she didn't have health-care benefits or medical leave. Can you believe that someone who works faithfully for 20 years gets sick and the university has no commitment to that person? That's really wrong, really wrong!"
Raised in a middle-class home, Bob took things like health care for granted. But sweating it out with Ellie in the dish line opened Bob's eyes to a whole new world.
"Well, I went to the admin- istration," he continued. "Can you believe it? They said they couldn't do anything for Miss Ellie Green. 'It's our policy,' was the answer they gave. I was furious. I went to visit Ellie. She had no income, and debts were piling up. She told me she couldn't afford to get the right medication. That was it! I decided to do something about it." [continued 8/23]
—Bruce Main in Spotting the Sacred
My Response: What "Ellies" are being unjustly treated in my community?
Thought to Apply: Justice without love is always injustice. —Paul Tillich (theologian)
Adapted from Spotting the Sacred (Baker, 2006) by permission.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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