Probably the best job I ever had was working for the North Staffs YMCA. If ever there was a job that proved that there’s more to life than getting loads of money it was that one.
I came across, served and worked alongside a number of people young and old who for one reason or another had fallen on hard times and were either in need of help to get out of their situation, or were yet to get to the place of recognising their need to get to the place where they needed help. Nothing dragged me out of the complacent state and into a compassionate state than the work with these people.
Looking back I consider the work and the hours of trying to help people who essentially were happy to take a hand-out, but weren’t looking for a change in their lives. I think about this, because there is still the call to be compassionate and help those in need. Yet in doing so I come across addressing the immediate need for food, clothing and accommodation with the structural and emotional need to offer support to the least of those in our society.
I struggle with the concept of making poverty history. I struggle, because I’m not sure if that’s our call, or our mission as representatives of the Kingdom that is not of this earth. I know we have a prophetic responsibility to call out the wrongs in our society. The gap between rich and poor is a problem. Related to the loopholes issue I referred to recently, it will always be an aspect of the human condition that we will seek to gain benefits and advantages for self even at the cost of others. Righteousness calls for us to be different.
I also believe that the Christian community should be a witness to the world of how Kingdom principles of righteousness and peace work effectively to address such issues among ‘our own’ so that those in need are cherished and supported. Bearing witness and being prophetic, however, is not to make demands of a change to the running of systems and powers that will continually be unrighteous until the Kingdom is fully established on earth. That is to say until Jesus returns not only is the poor we will have with us, but the poverty mentality will always be with us.
That is not a defeatist talk, that is the sort of thing that drives the hope to see how God’s Kingdom can be made real in this world in one life after another.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 