On Assisting the Less Fortunate

A flashback jolts my memory. I had taken an independent study course in seminary with Dr. J. Kenneth Grider. He was working on a book to be titled Poor Like Me. My assignment was to experience the struggles of the poor and disadvantaged. Assignments included going to the welfare office for the experience of standing in a welfare line seeking government handout, or spending an evening in a local hospital ER to observe on a late Friday night. The most difficult assignment was to spend the night in a rescue mission. Not all aspects of that night were positive. For example, we were ushered into the chapel to to hear an hour’s worth of fire-and-brimstone preaching before being allowed to eat watered-down soup and day-old bread. Or, after eating throwaway doughnuts and pastries, being herded like cattle out the doors at 6:30 a.m., forced to start a daylong walk about downtown Miami to avoid arrest for loitering. The sights and sounds of that sleepless night in a gym-like room rush back. Incessant coughing. Vomiting. Jet engine–like snoring.

From Paul Farmer on “poverty and eradicating suffering,” “If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.” There is also the haunting moral clarity of Jesus (Matt. 25:42–43 NIV): “For I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” Perhaps it is time to quit being a bystander and act. Become a hope helper. The negatives in life attract our attention and we must open our eyes to the needs around us, remain positive, and help create and offer a better way to  positively change the world. We found ourselves in a river of suffering, needy people. We didn’t have great resources, but we used what tools we had at our disposal to help alleviate that suffering. We did what we could. We had to do something about the scourge of extreme poverty and hunger. We had the means to do something rather than nothing. We couldn’t feed a village, but at least we could feed one.

There (are) no mile markers for where love is taking us. No map. No compass. Just Jesus. —#LOVEDOES

Nixon, David F.. Dancing with the Impossible (pp. 53-54). WestBow Press. Kindle Edition.