Let It Begin With Me


Since I have started this series of rants and wrestlings over what to do about extreme poverty, I have come up with answers that have questions and questions that lead to more questions.  In the end, somehow I am back to me.  (For those of you who do not know, the World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.25 a day whereas Unicef defines it as living on less than $1.  About 1 in 6 people fall into this category globally.)

There is this song that makes me want to sway like an ice skater when I hum it in my head.  "Let...there...be peace...on earth...and let it begin....with me....Let....there...be peace...on earth...the peace that was meant....to be..."  If it weren't such a hokey song, I may have attached the video, but the videos all seem much lamer than those phrases.

I wish that eradicating extreme poverty were as simple as microfinance and child sponsorship.  I also wish that hurting marriages could be healed just with a therapist.  The therapist helps, but not to get to the root of the problem.  The root of problems such as this is too deep-it's sin.  My marriage didn't begin to heal until Jesus kicked our butts.  It is weird actually.  Normal people have asked me which marriage therapist we went to; they wanted their phone number.  They look at me sideways when I tell them Jesus was the only marriage counselor we had that made a difference.

I think poverty is maybe like that.  Enabling someone to make a living or get an education is certainly important and worthy of time and money, but it can't be all of it.  The strangest thing is that I have begun to wonder who is really poor: the one who has little or the one who never has enough?

When I talk to friends about how rich we are, they sometimes make fun of me.  "Maybe you, but not me!"  I used to think like that.  Somewhere, this odd thing happened to my heart.  I have had plenty with God and plenty without Him.  I have struggled with Him and struggled without Him.  Having God makes me rich.  Sure, it is somewhat arrogant to speak like this when we started out talking about extreme poverty that I, admittedly, have never tasted, despite having grown up poor by American standards.  Still, it is not the hollowness of belly or the lack of shelter that ever made me as insecure as the lack of purpose, of meaning, before He walked in.

Physical poverty is terrible, but so is spiritual poverty.  We must remedy both or we are just feeding a problem.  And we must remedy them both-their poverty and ours. 

Have you noticed how many times in this post that I have apologized for admitting Jesus is the answer?  It is odd...strange..weird...  I don't know how to just let Him be.  I have friends who are more involved in social justice and resolving poverty than I am, than any Christians I know.  It is embarrassing to know that the world doesn't even think Jesus is in this equation.  Not really.  Not unless you are with HOPE International or Compassion or World Vision.  The rest of the planet thinks we are delusional.  I guess it doesn't much matter.  I still know that Jesus is the best marriage counselor in the world, and I bet He can rescue the lost better than any search and rescue team, He can heal better than any hospital and He can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless better than any NGO. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christ in His Distressing Disguise

Image
When I was much younger, I learned about this remarkable woman, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, then simply known as Mother Teresa. As a teenager herself, she had chosen to serve God by leaving her home in the former Yugoslavia to go practically around the world to India and become a nun. There she taught school, but she was distracted by the poor on the streets. Longing to care for them, she needed to be released from her teaching duties. Eventually a new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, was formed by Mother Teresa to serve them, the poorest of the poor. I wonder today what attracted me to her. I didn't know much about India. The pictures of the suffering, the cachetic bodies that barely resembled humans, puzzled me. Growing up with movies and air brushed photographs, as well as a skepticism of news and government organizations, it can be hard to believe. How can there be such incredible suffering in my world? Mother Teresa was doing God's work; I know that was exciti
Read more

Blog Carnival-Seasons

Image
It was all so much simpler in my spring.  I suppose it is for everyone.  That is why babies and puppies and newness are squealed over.  I have been struggling.  Spring has long gone.  The leaves are falling. I loved what I had, what once defined me. Without it now, I feel like a crab without a shell-              vulnerable...                            homeless...                                           dry in spirit. I know, that all is not lost. I know, things change. I know, that God,              who brought me from there to there once,              will bring me from here to there again. I know, the story is not over. I know, the season will change, again. I wish my heart knew all this as well. Check out more blog entries on Seasons at the Carnival .
Read more

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us and love us and share our burdens, but to challenge us, to force us to grow.
Read more