Stocking the Allendale Food Bank
Lydia, is a very enterprising girl. By selling jewelery to our mission teams and babysitting, she raised enough money to pay for her ticket (and mine) to the US so that she could participate in the trip to Allendale County in the lower part of the state of South Carolina. This is the poorest county in the state and is a place where our church is partnering with a church that has few financial resources to minister in their own community.
I often consider the common charecteristics, of rampant sexual abuse of children, and girls. Women with children from multiple fathers, and men that are not motivated to provide for their multiple children. All of which are common in the culture of poverty.
We from our middle class perspective become enraged that everyone has a cell phone no matter how impoverished, even people who are homeless have cell phones! What? This just doesn’t make sense to us in our middle class mindset…we would never spend money on a cell phone if we didn’t have a home to live in, or a job!
Yet, when we stop to consider the mind set that drives what people in poverty do…it is often immediate gratification. If the guy on the street has $1 he will spend it on some small item like a bag of chips, rather than save it up so that he can buy enough to get a meal.
Oh, but wait a minute…are we so different? What do you do with that extra $25 you saved because you went to the store with coupons in hand? Go to the movies or maybe eat out that night? Immediate gratification.
Conclusion: Poverty is the condition that afflicts each and every one of us, even though it may be reflected differently in the physical realm it is all the same in the spiritual realm. A matter of the heart searching for gratification in something physical, when the only real peace is the Spirit of Jesus Christ living in us.
What a way to counteract the spirit of poverty in all situations…the church with a lot of money working with the church with a little money to combat the poverty in both circumstances. All the same church body in the eyes of Christ.
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