Morning Reads for Tuesday, February 16, 2015

I was reading the “Death and the Prosperity Gospel…” piece on Sunday morning. Through the whole article I was thinking about my 1st cousin, stage 4 and awaiting a opening in a long term hospice center. Through the last 18 months of her stage 4 status, some of her family who started following various types of prosperity beliefs and even the corresponding political following that walks hand in hand with the ideal of being blessed because you earned it mantra, have had to look very closely at their strongly held percept of “follow the rules and you will be rewarded, you will deserve to receive what you will be giving to you by God”. My cousin had to quiet her job, and spend the last 10 months on disability and Medicaid. She become on the the many who do not pay taxes and live off the government. She went on food stamps, moved from her nice apartment to a tiny government funded assistant living center after she went through her retirement funds and savings. She become every thing their faith and politic fought against. She had excepted she would not survive, but her aunt gave hundreds of dollars to Sunday morning shows just knowing she would receive a miracle, that our cousin was truly one of the blessed.

A few hours after I finished the article, my mother called to let me know my cousin, first person on her mother’s – second on my side of her family to graduate college, never carried a debt beyond a car payment, never got a speeding ticket, voted in every election, never overspent, always followed the rules, and one of the most honest and truly nice people I ever knew, passed away – most likely while I was reading the article. She just turned 48.

As our mutual second cousin told me later that night (the one who told me that there had to be other options for my cousin then disability and subsided housing), “God needs to tell me what his plan was here, because right now it sucks.”