Contemplative Bible Reading

Deuteronomy 14:28-29 (New Living Translation)

28 “At the end of every third year, bring the entire tithe of that year’s harvest and store it in the nearest town. 29 Give it to the Levites, who will receive no allotment of land among you, as well as to the foreigners living among you, the orphans, and the widows in your towns, so they can eat and be satisfied. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all your work.

The tithe for every third year was to go into a local storehouse. A little math shows that about 3% of all production went into these storehouses.

Who consumes this production?

1. Levites
2. Widows
3. Orphans
4. Foreigners

ooops, must be a mistake here. How did group number 4. get into this list? Like the other three groups in the list, they could not own the means of production. Hence, they had nothing and could obtain nothing. Hmmm, sounds like a good group to receive the blessings of the community.

Now we come to the difficult part: how does this translate to today? Jesus tells us to love our neighbor and goes on to explain who is on the list of neighbors. It is really a simple list. (1) Everyone. And that includes the foreigners living among us, i.e., immigrants.

Surely there is a limit to how much of our production goes to immigrants. Perhaps not.

God, help me in my unbelief.