Let me not run into debt

Debt is a disease that undermines health and morals. It destroys the peace of mind, domestic happiness, and the joy in living. It is the grave of independence and honor and happiness. It demoralizes and disgraces, discredits and enslaves. It gnaws at the vitals of life, cripples energy and enthusiasm, crushes enterprise and ambition. It embarrasses and harasses, degrades and grinds, tortures and kills.

Idleness and prodigality and vanity augment debt, industry and thrift and integrity pay debt.

Let me most scrupulously pay my debt, if I have my debt to pay. Let me not evade paying my debt under any excuse. Let me contract my expenses, let me do without luxuries, let me dispense with necessities, let me reduce my wants, and let me live on the lowest scale, but let me always hasten to the house of the lender of the loan to pay him his due.

However heavy a load man may carry on his back, it is lighter than load of debt. Poverty is bearable when it is bereft of debt. Untold grief and remorse are in store for him who has the borrowing habit. Like unto the man sunk in the quagmire of mud in the rainy season, he finds it difficult to extricate himself from the ditch of debt.

Let me bear with privation and poverty and let me live ill-fed and ill-clad, than borrow my neighbor's money to meet my daily needs. Let me feed myself on half the bread, earned by honest labor than thrive on the whole, bought of borrowed money. Let me sleep without my meal and rise hungry in the morning, than go to bed with my stomach filled with food purchased with money that is not mine.

Enable me, O Bountiful Lord, to free myself soon from the bondage of indebtedness, if perchance, I happen to be involved in debt. But better by far, I beseech thee, save me at all from running into debt.

This page was last updated on Friday, February 11, 2005.