Kendall
United Methodist Church

By July 5, 2025, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a federal budget bill. Provisions of that bill would exact the largest cuts ever to Medicaid, which provides health care for 1 of 5 Americans, and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For Florida, the changes would be particularly devastating:

• 2.9 million Floridians rely on SNAP for monthly grocery assistance
• 3.8 million Floridians depend on Medicaid for health care

Decreasing these federal programs would put a greater burden on the state of Florida, and in the case of health care, on the hospitals and health care facilities we all depend on.

On Tuesday, June 17, Bishop Tom Berlin urged United Methodists to learn about these impacts and to advocate for the most vulnerable in our society. Florida Impact, an advocacy group for nutrition and health care, offered a webinar to provide information. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.

Take action now

1. Learn about the bill and its impacts. Links to information from valued sources are below.
2. Contact U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and Sen. Ashley Moody and ask them to vote against any bill that reduces nutrition and health care for the vulnerable in our society. Call or send email messages to ensure your messages are received in time.

Senator Moody: Call (202) 224-3041 or visit her website.
Senator Scott: Call (202) 224-5274 or visit his website.

Tools to help you learn and act

• Fact sheet detailing impacts on Florida residents
• Medicaid cut fact sheet from the League of Women Voters
• A sample letter/email
• A sample phone call script

Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out; judge righteously; defend the rights of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31:8-9

Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. - Luke 6:28 (NLT)

Don't you hate it when people pick on you? Or maybe not even you, but you see all the hate in the world. You see kids being bullied for the dumbest things and see people in the world being unkind and hate all around. And it can make you really feel disillusioned about people and the future.

Here's the thing. You can't change other people. People are going to do bad, ugly, and horrible things. And this has been happening since the beginning of time. Just think about Abel who was killed at the beginning of Genesis, simply because his brother got jealous of him.

Realizing that you can't change someone else can make it all seem pretty helpless. However, we're not left helpless or without power. In the Bible, we're challenged to do something different. When people curse you, you're to bless them. When someone hurts you, you are to pray for them.

How crazy is that? That's not usually my first response, praying for someone when they treat me badly. Yet that's what the Bible encourages us to do. The Bible doesn't promise that people will always treat us well. It doesn't tell us those horrible things will stop in the fallen world we live in. What it does do is to tell us to pray for those people and bless them.

Prayer can do what we can't do. And when we pray for and bless those who do bad things to us, we're helping ourselves and them too. Instead of allowing people to hurt us, we're forgiving and asking God to help them! Wow. What would our world look like if we spent time each day praying for those people around us doing bad things?

Taken from studentdevos.com