Yesterday I was reading some pretty powerful material that one of my spiritual dads is writing these days.  One of the focus verses was Proverbs 14:31.  In The Message it reads like this:

“You insult your Maker when you exploit the powerless; when you’re kind to the poor, you honor God” Proverbs 14:31, MSG.”

Geez, insult your Maker?!  That will hit you like a ton of bricks.  Sigh.  It's a powerful verse to say the least.  As I'm reading through this devotional, the focus is in regards to how we handle the poor.  Then this kicker of a question was asked: 

How well do you think we’re doing as the Body of Christ with this topic?  (serving & loving the poor)

This is one of those questions I’ll be chewing on for a bit.  This is my first reaction….there will probably be more thoughts.  I think we do an incredible job with this stuff when we’ve got our passport in our back pocket, our Nalgene filled with purified water, and when our feet are treading around in a foreign land somewhere.  Ugh.  I don’t like the way this is sounding, but I think it’s true.  Why do we notice/see/serve the poor so much better abroad? 

Last week as we were talking to our India team leaders, they shared with us that some of their students have started ministering in their free time to the population of homeless people that live at the local transit station in Calcutta near the team house.  The issue is that they've been faced with some opposition.  They have been directly addressed and strongly advised to not help these people because they are just free-loaders and they take advantage of the help that’s being given.  This made me think about something...

I'm pretty sure that this situation is exactly the same here in the US.  If a group of foreign exchange students came to the US and were living here for a short time and started a ministry to the homeless of Gainesville, would they be faced with the same scrutiny?  I fear the answer might be yes. 

So why is it that it’s ok in a foreign land but not your own?  Why do we look at poor people differently in a foreign country and in our own backyard we think different about them?  I don’t know.  It’s not good.  This isn’t judgmental, I’m in the same stinkin' boat.  What have I done to serve those less fortunate here in Gainesville?  It settles in my spirit about as well as food in India.  Ugh. 

Maybe it’s because when we’re somewhere besides “home,” it’s seen as a temporary thing.  When we see the poor in our hometown this stuff hits too close to home. 

Then I read through James 2:1-13 in The Message and he too speaks on this same topic.  But I’m pretty sure James didn’t have parameters based on our physical location, at home or abroad, when he wrote this stuff. I'm reminded today that the poor are kinda a big deal in God's eyes.  It's a good reminder of a perspective shift that's needed. 

This is the stuff that's challenging me today as I continue to chew on this question:  How well do you think we’re doing as the Body of Christ with this topic?