Surge of Passion

Hello faithful readers! 🙂

I know I often talk about my heart for the poor. Every so
often I have a surge of energy and passion that is geared toward loving the
poor that I have to get out. I’m sitting here in my room reading zillions of
Scriptures that are direct commands from God about how we are to treat the poor
and about how much He loves them. His heart is for them!

With help from the folks at Biblegateway.com, I have tried
to compile all the verses that speak about poverty, the poor, needy, the oppressed,
widows, orphans, etc. There are so many. There are well over 300, and I’m sure
I didn’t get them all. And you know what the interesting thing is? The vast
majority are from the Old Testament.

Here are a few of my favourites at the moment:

Learn to do good, seek
JUSTICE, help the OPPRESSED. Defend the cause of ORPHANS. Fight for the rights
of WIDOWS. Isaiah 1:17

And if you give even a
cup of cold water to one of the LEAST of my followers, you will surely be
rewarded. Matt 10:42

Father to the FATHERLESS,
defender of WIDOWS – this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely
in families; he sets the prisoners free
and gives them joy. Psalm 68:5-6

For the Lord hears the cries of the needy, he does
not despise his imprisoned people. Psalm 69:33

In the Old Testament, the Hebrews celebrated what they call
the Sabbath Year every 7^th year. During this year, every person
refrained from working for the entire year. God provided in abundance for the
Israelites in the 6^th year so that they wouldn’t have to harvest in
the 7^th. So, the crops would continue growing, and they would be
made available for the poor and foreigners among them that were struggling to
get by. Because it was a year of rest, the rich were forced to slow down in their
accumulation of wealth, and the poor had a chance to catch up. Thus, the gap
between the rich and poor was minimized. The Hebrews then celebrated the Year
of Jubilee every 50 years, or rather the 7×7 (49-50^th) year. This
ritual alleviated debt, because every debt accrued would be forgiven, freed the
slaves, and returned land to its original owner. What a cool idea God had when
he thought this up; redistribute property and wealth to those who are
struggling. He did not want any poor among them. If this practice was followed
closely, they would have been a society without any permanent poverty. We could
definitely learn something from this.

I definitely believe that God wants us, also, to fight
against poverty. Not just by giving hand-outs but by sharing what we have, by bridging
the gap between the rich and the poor, and by genuinely loving people that are
less fortunate than us. It really starts with bite-sized change and the power
of building relationships. The poor are all around us. Jesus often talks about
taking care of the orphans and the widows, which were those in society that could
not care for themselves. Today, we see so many around us that are struggling:
the single mom, the teenager on the street, those that are battered and
bruised. These are the orphans and widows of our day.

I think that’s all for now…

and here is a local church that we visited…