Poverty. Damn. Something thats always been with us, and something that will always be with us. Even Jesus said "The poor you will always have with you.." (Mark 14:7). He also said, what you do for the least of these you do for me. (Matt 25:40)
So why then do I sit here, on my Macbook computer on my comfortable couch, while I drink my coffee, in my full clothing, with money in my pocket, complacent, and say "Something must be done about the poor!" ?
I'm comfortable here.
...that is an issue.
Part of my excuse is that I'm in college and have no money to help out. All of "my money" isn't really "my money" at all, but borrowed money. So in my mind I have a slight out.
But then I remember.... its.not.just.about.money.
Its about living past yourself. Slamming on the breaks of selfish desires, raising the white flag of comfort and becoming TRULY human.
Its not about doing everything, fixing poverty completely (how nice it would be though...), its not about cleaning up your city, its not about giving up everything you own to someone else, its about doing something. I have been a christian for a while now and its really easy for me to get down on myself for not doing much. For not going out of my way. For not giving a dollar to *insert something*. I mean, yes, I have helped out at food banks, I've talked to homeless, I've emptied my pockets of change to someone in need, all sorts of things, and thats a step in the right direction, but these things are few and far between for me.
But what if we were all doing these things?
all the time?
We could give poverty the one, two and say dueces.
This is mostly on a local level.
But what about bigger?
Check this out:
These two girls are probably the most charming girls I've ever met. I met them in Choluteca, Honduras where a GCM churh is building a place called Casa Hogar Vida. It is an AIDS orphanage for families and children who have been effected by AIDS. I dont know if you know this, but Honduras is poor. I mean, POOR.
We went there to put shoes on barefoot kids, who walked on rocks and scattered glass. To put roofs on shacks smaller than my room, where entire (and sometimes multiple) families lived.
I'm not trying to boast, please hear me on that.
Where I am going with this is we have to take small steps. Making a difference in the world may be out of scale for most of us, but making a difference to one person is more than possibly for anyone who tries.
Lately, strangely, I've been thinking in knots. On my walk between classes today my shoe lace come untied. How does a shoe lace come untied all by itself? I checked it earlier and it was a firm, classic shoe lace knot. But as my legs furiously kicked while I walked to class, my shoe lace was just suddenly, undone.
Some problems are like this. A few furious kicks and its undone. They are fixed quickly, just on the way.
But other problems are like that megaknot you would tie as a kid with fishing line or yarn, where even thinking about how you would get it back to one straight string gives you a head ache. These knots take time. They take the undoing of single loops, sometimes doubles. Its a slow process that hurts your fingers sometimes. Sometimes the knot is your biggest critique. One time while my church was cooking out for the homeless in Columbia, we went to an older man who was homeless, and asked him to join us. We said we had food and he said "great. But do you have a place for me to sleep tonight?" He then went off ranting that we were placing a band-aid on the bleeding critical wound of poverty (maybe not his exact words, but something of the like). Yes, this was hard to hear. We thought we were doing something good and kind, to the least of these, and yet they asked for more.
This knot is far from untangled.
But at least we're thinking about the knot. We're discussing the knot. Drawing out ways we can untangle this knot.
This knot wont be untangled in my life. But damn it, if each of us just tried to undo one of these loops...
go.
go go go.
By the way, Jesus was homeless. Think about it.
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