Sometimes our efforts to be faithful and intentional gets interrupted by the realities of life.  It is true that there are places in our nation and our community where people’s pets eat better than the poor in our communities.  Perhaps it’s a situation of neglect or indifference.  It could even be that we don’t really know who the poor are around us.  And yet, we aren’t let off the hook for lack of being a blessing to those who go without.  Situational ethics demands that we answer the immediate need without regard to a person’s circumstances.  It’s difficult to say we don’t know the poor when they’re around us everywhere.  Some of them even look like us.  And when they don’t, there is still a moral mandate to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, even if it means helping those whom we may have felt (at one time) didn’t deserve it.

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
God of mercy and love, humble me to look beyond what’s comfortable and convenient in my world to see those who are discomforted and inconvenienced by circumstances of poverty. Open my eyes that I might not miss an opportunity to help someone in need.

         Finding people in need is not a new phenomenon.  Those in need have always been around and we don’t have to look very far to discover them.  And there are and have been systems created to take care of the poor.  But there are also systems created to keep the poor in their poverty, ignoring the very basic needs of health — food, shelter, and clothing.  And it may be true as well that many of the needs of the poor are not material but physical, emotional, and skill related.  Sometimes people will ask for what they want, and not what they need.  Our responsibility is to give people what they ask for, recognizing that what they ask for may answer a short-term problem, and not a long-term systemic issue.  We can offer them the most generous gift we have — the ability to change a person’s condition from bad to better by giving them the means to transform themselves.  Sometimes what they are asking for is dignity and respect, and maybe just to know that someone sees them.

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Generous and gracious Christ, let me be a vessel of Your grace that allows me to help others any way I can, that in helping them, I have offered them what they really need.

         People typically have some idea and feelings about the poor.  Sometimes those feelings are shaped by members of the society and culture we live in.  In most cases, the poor are used as pawns to justify the needs and motives of the rich and are often blamed for their poverty.  They are labeled with derogatory names to shame and embarrass them, all in an effort to make them feel guilty for being poor.  And it’s not that their condition is deemed deplorable, but the guilt and shame are pointed at them.  Someone once said, “Guilt is when you’ve done something wrong; shame is when you are something wrong.”  And so, it is the guilt and shame of being poor that is laid at the door of those who lack material things.

         But there two other types of poverty that are described in biblical terms.  The first type of poverty describes those who are Spiritually impoverished.  They are full of themselves, thriving on their material wealth.  They have everything they need in this world, but they dismiss and ignore the needs of those around them and even ignore their need for God. The second type of poverty describes those who lack material wealth and the bare necessities of life, but they are poor in Spirit — they are blessed because they know their need for God.

         Those of us who are United Methodist are informed by our spiritual leaders who have crafted the Social Principles of the church informing us about poverty and the poor and what our Christian response should be, making three salient points.

1. Poverty—In spite of general affluence in the industrialized nations, the majority of persons in the world live in poverty.
2. As a church, we are called to support the poor and challenge the rich, and …
3. Poverty most often has systemic causes, and therefore we do not hold poor people morally responsible for their economic state.

        It seems that it’s important for each of us to discover our own poverty level in order to avoid the greatest poverty of all — that spiritual poverty that ignores and dismisses the poor lying at our gates.

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Gracious and loving Christ, as I engage a world where wealth is relative and poverty is a reality, open my heart and eyes that I may see your brothers and sisters in need lying at my gate.