"I wasn't exactly sure what a fully devoted Christian looked like, or if the world had even seen one in the last few centuries. From my desk at college, it looked like some time back we had stopped living Christianity and just started studying it." -Shane Claiborne
“He pled the cause of the afflicted and needy;
Then it was well.
Is not that what it means to know Me?”
Declares the LORD."
-Jeremiah 22:16
"God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them." -Bono
"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." -James 1:27
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I think it is a lot easier to do this in places like Guatemala. We don't take the time to find the poor. To find those who are hurting. The poor are easy to find, easy to serve, in other places. God has challenged me to find how to serve here. Our garbage dump doesn't have thousands of people who live in it. But we do have a lot of suffering and poor people spiritually. Now to figure out how to serve. I don't want to just be another North American. I want to be different. Find God in places no one else goes. Serve those who don't see God's love. But how?.... I guess God will help me find where I am to serve if I start looking.
ReplyDelete"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat." ~Mother Teresa
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree that we must find ways to help those less fortunate than ourselves, I also believe God has His reasons for putting each of us where He has. There are great needs -- spiritual, physical, emotional, educational, social as well financial -- which need to be met right in our own homes, neighborhoods, churches, and communities. We don't have to go around the world and we don't have to be rich. We can begin just with kindness, prayer, patience, regular service and charitable giving. Not everyone is called to serve the poorest of the poor as was Mother Teresa, but we are all called to serve our brothers and sisters. If everyone would do at least something, no one would have to go without.
Rebecca - I think you are right, there are a lot of poor here, but it is not always so obvious. I also think about how in the story of the good Samaritan the people avoided him by walking on the other side of the road. In Canada it is all to easy to just avoid the roads where we might come across people suffering.
ReplyDeleteBooklady - I agree, and I know that if I lost all that I have I would not end up sleep on the streets because of the many relationships I have with people. I think in North America poverty is far more a poverty of relationships than a poverty of resourses.