A Mighty Heart
Proverbs 28:27 Whoever gives to the poor will have plenty. Whoever refuses to help them will get nothing but curses.
I wonder … when I use words like, “poverty”, “hunger”, “starvation”, are they real to you, or let’s be honest, are they part of some far-off, distant concept, the likes of which has never come knocking on your door? Hmm?
A good many years ago I was having lunch at a Christian conference in India. Now I love Indian food, but this was what seemed like my twenty-seventh hot curry for the week and the novelty had definitely worn off.
It was even worse for my Canadian colleague, Bob, whose mouth struggles to produce much saliva. That hot food was a killer for him.
Anyhow, Bob and I (feeling a tad non-plussed by now) were sitting next to a young man, Barun, from Bangladesh. He was wolfing his food down with such gusto that we asked him, “So, what do you eat at home in Bangladesh?”
He put down his fork and with a definite quiver in his voice answered, “My wife and our two children, we mostly eat rice. But sometimes we don’t have enough. On those days, we don’t eat.”
I’ll never forget what I felt in that moment. My heart ached in the knowledge that some days he, his wife and his children didn’t eat.
Up until then, poverty had just been a concept to me but now it had a human face. Now the empty bellies of his children, for the first time in my life, were real.
Proverbs 28:27 Whoever gives to the poor will have plenty. Whoever refuses to help them will get nothing but curses.
This God, this mighty God, He has a mighty heart for the poor.
And let me get right in your face here … unless we share that heart, unless we do something about it, how can we possibly profess to be His people?
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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