About the poor.
I read 1 John 3 tonight (Jan 15, in England) at the house group meeting I went to with Mr. Bob Delehaye. (I decided to say something because I realized that I needed the practice talking in front of adults. If I can’t share in a house meeting how can I lead a Bible study? So I talked.) The “leader” spoke about Mark 12:29 “The first of all commandments is: Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” But he didn’t say anything about what that meant. How that was done. So I looked into 1 John where I knew there was a lot of talk about love. There was a lot I could have read but I started with 3:10 and read through 18. And I told them about what my dad said about loving the brothers. I told them that love acted. It acted in the way that Christ gave his life up for us, the way that a husband is to love his wife, it came out as active love for a neighbor. (I know there are also verses about loving Him and keeping His commandments, but I couldn’t just take the group over since I was a guest. So I just stuck to these verses.) Part of what make these verses so appropriate was verse 17 “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? … let us not love in word and tongue but in deed and truth.” So I opened up my heart to them, I will and do fight to not be distrustful. I am willing to care for the poor. I still don’t know how best to do it, and I asked the people there to pray for me that I would have wisdom to know where to give and in what manner I can be of help. I think I have a tendency, maybe it comes from my dad’s hard work ethic (maybe it is just the puritan work ethic), to want to make sure that I am not just feeding greed and that I am not making it possible for people not to work. I think part of my cynicism about the poor comes from seeing the ‘poor’ in America. The factory workers, out of a job and not being able to pay their bills, but that’s usually because they didn’t save their money when they had it. Instead they bought the truck they now can’t make payments on. I know, the African people are not like those kind of poor. I will look, and I am willing to appear foolish to the rest of the world in order to give to those in need. But I need to figure out how that is practically done without making the people dependent.