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“I saw the tears of the oppressed — and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors — and they have no comforter. ...I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor. This ...is meaningless, a chasing after the wind... Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:1,4,6 NIV

    The year before I became a teenager (1971), John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band released a single entitled Power to the People. Though young in years, I understood the basic message of the song — the powerless need to be empowered, for they are oppressed by the powerful. And there was plenty of “powerlessness” to be seen through the medium of television. Two examples:

• I saw demonstrations by “blacks” being squelched by “whites.” Images of riots and water cannons, angry words and assassinations filled my mind. People who wanted to be treated as equals with others were treated with contempt. One specific image is branded into my memory — a young man sitting on the curb of the street, his clothes soaked, his head in his hands and not water, but tears, streaming down his face. Prejudice, selfishness and poverty had embittered his spirit.

      ”I saw the tears of the oppressed — and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors — and they have no comforter.”

• I grew up watching the “baseball score” of body counts in Vietnam — a war that began when I began grade school and wasn’t finished until I was in high school. One particular image is seared into my memory — a young girl running down a road, badly burned from napalm, screaming and crying after her village had been attacked. She was dying as she lived — powerless and caught between two warring powers.

      “I saw the tears of the oppressed — and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors — and they have no comforter.”

“I saw the tears of the oppressed — and they have no comforter...”

It’s been nearly thirty years now. And though much has changed, not much has. Still, there is a need for “power to the people.” Still, we can see the tears of the oppressed. And still, the causes for the pain and the tears remains the same: “...all labor and all achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor.”

Three thoughts:

• We revel in how “great” the economy is right now in America — and rush to spend our increasing wealth on goods from nations who manufacture them through slave labor.

• Our standard of living is probably higher now than it has ever been in our life, but what about our standard of sharing? What are you sharing with others?

• The figure on our paychecks is probably bigger than it’s been in ten years. But why has the national average of charitable giving changed less than 1% either way in the past several decades in America? Is part of the answer found in how much the figure on your church contribution check has changed in the past decade?