Category: Poverty Page 2 of 6

Pulling Weeds While People Are Dying: How Do I Respond to the World’s Suffering?

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On August 19, 2021

In Eternity, Poverty

I pull out the weeds in my lawn and think about how absurd it is that I am pulling weeds while under the same sky, a young man tries to escape his country by hanging onto the wing of a plane.

I put Cheerios into my shopping cart, and jingling monotonously over the loudspeakers is Dance until the morning light/Forget about the worries on your mind/We can leave them all behind. Half a world away, a mother tries to thrust her baby to strangers and safety on the other side of barbed wire.

My daughter and her friend chatter in the backseat about a missed pass in volleyball and how Honors English is so much work. The same moment in time, a 15-year-old daughter of a pastor is pulled from her bed and forced into a marriage of terror, her father watching broken and helpless.

I read about the mountainous landfill in Ghana, filled with cast-off American clothing. Even the poor of Africa are overwhelmed by the influx of our discarded shirts and dresses. I contemplate the statement: “We’re buying 60 percent more clothes now than we did 15 years ago. But we’re keeping them for half as long.” Meanwhile, a few countries over, a doctor dashes around her city, foraging for any bit of cash she can coax from empty ATM machines. 

My house now has two refrigerators in it. Two. Because heaven forbid I go to the grocery store (which is five minutes away) more than once a week. But I justified this because practically everyone in America has more than one fridge and I bought the cheaper one and I buy used clothes and I pull my own weeds instead of paying someone. There’s a whine in my voice and a defensiveness on my face because I don’t want to admit how spoiled I am, despite what meager sacrifices I am making.

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Four Walls Replace Patched Tents: Is There Hope for the Homeless?

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On August 3, 2021

In Poverty

Tents multiply 
like mushrooms
after a spring rain.

The poor
addicted 
broken
tucked into dark corners
under bridges
stayed away from us.

And we forgot they were there.

But today
their destitution
creeps into our cul de sac
cannot escape our vision.

Tens of thousands image-bearers 
fall asleep in filth
captive to fear
imprisoned in despondency.

Every night.

And we forget their tents
until their proximity invades our denial.

Could their nearness be their
Maker’s plea from His heart
to His hands and His feet
to run
to touch
to restore?

Sunday at 10am,
the hands and feet gaze through stained-glass windows
at vacant land
resting idle.

Consider Jesus 
who left behind glory
to sit in the dirt 
to touch the leper
to be sleepless
friendless
possessionless
homeless 
to feel our sorrow.

That we may transform
desolate fields
into villages of relief
restoration
redemption.

Nestled next to the house of God,
those shooed off sidewalks
shoved off benches
snubbed from parks
find home.

Four walls replace patched tents
gardens reclaim garbage
jobs redeem shame
communities relieve contention.

The formerly hopeless 
flourishing next door
to the place 
where they found
eternal hope.

Because God so loved the world . . .

That His churches would choose
to race to the rescue
to fight for the chance
to be hands of mercy
feet of love
to be first in line 
to welcome the least of these.

*Inspired by Goodness Village, Compassion Village, and other churches building mini-villages for the homeless and vulnerable on their property. Thank you to Luke Grover for telling me about this innovative idea.

*Also, thank you to Alyssa Dunker. This topic materialized in my head in verse form, but when I started writing it, I realized I’m really not a good poet. Alyssa pushed and prodded it out of me and did a lot of editing. If you like it, she gets the credit too.

*Photos from Pixabay

You Are Not Allowed to Think We Are Poor

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On December 11, 2020

In Poverty

I can hear that edge in your voices, my children. What is it? Self-pity? Envy? You mention the kid at school who gets picked up in a Lamborghini. Or the friend who has a vacation house in Mexico. 

You spend the night at a friend’s beautiful, large house and tell me in shocked amazement how decorations are changed for every season. “Even the soaps in the bathroom!” you exclaim. Your camera roll syncs with mine, so I see how you took pictures of your friend’s walk-in closet, rows of shoes and clothes. 

I overhear another one of you talking to your friend in the backseat about the cars passing by. You like cool cars. Fancy cars. You know they are expensive, so you tell your friend that we can’t buy one. 

“We’re kinda poor, aren’t we, Mom?” you ask.

This did not happen in Tanzania. 

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This Pandemic Can Help Us to Identify With the World’s Poor

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On December 10, 2020

In A Life Overseas, Poverty

I was always blown away by the number of funerals. During the years our househelper in Tanzania worked for us, I lost count of how many times she asked for time off to attend a funeral for a family member. She was my age, but during those years she lost her mother. Her mother-in-law. A sister. More than one uncle. Several cousins. What was the cause? I would always ask. Malaria, typhoid, or many times, no one knew why. Disease and death were far too common. 

Experts will probably be asking it for years: Why are some developing countries seemingly less impacted from COVID-19 than more developed countries? Is it because they just are testing less? Have a younger population, get more sunlight, have more built up immunity? I’m certain some of those factors are true, but I also wonder if a central reason is because the effects of this pandemic haven’t changed much about regular life for the poor in developing countries. What feels shocking and abnormal to us is simply the way they have always lived. 

I’m listing some of these ways below, and I want to be clear that this is not about inducing guilt in those of us from affluent nations. I’m not trying to minimize the grief and loss so many of us have experienced this year. Instead, my purpose is to help us have greater compassion and empathy with the world’s poor. This pandemic can help us to identify with them in ways we had never been able to before. 

What’s new for us is normal for them. Here’s how:

Normalcy of deadly diseases

Yes, COVID-19 is a new virus, but for many in the world, they are already dealing with much worse. Statistics tell us that one and a half million people worldwide have died from COVID. Yet that same number of people die every year from tuberculosis, most of them from India, other parts of Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Like COVID, tuberculosis is also an airborne virus. It may not be a pandemic, but it is most certainly an epidemic.  

In addition, malaria kills over 400,000 people each year, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa (and some in South East Asia). Most of them are young children. There’s also HIV, dengue, typhoid, and rotavirus. For many people in the world, having deadly viruses lurk around every corner, in every cough, in households and churches, is normal life. 

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This is Why I Buy Used Stuff

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On November 13, 2020

In American Worldview, Poverty

The other day at Costco, I saw a woman with a CrockPot in her cart. I was tempted to run up to her and say, Do you know how easy it is to find one of those used? I refrained, of course. People already think I’m weird enough. So instead I just write about it on my blog.

But I know this first hand because I recently was on a quest for a CrockPot myself. I got a like-new one at a thrift store for $12, but there were dozens on OfferUp as well. I had my pick of the CrockPot litter. 

It has become a hobby of mine to buy used stuff as much as possible. It’s fun, but there’s more to it than finding a good deal. Here’s why it’s important to me:

  1. It’s the easiest way to shop ethically. Since so much of what we buy originates overseas, I don’t need to worry as much about which brands are using slave labor if I buy things used. This is especially true for clothing, which is often produced in Bangladesh, India, or China in horrifying conditions we wouldn’t wish on our greatest enemy. If we care about human rights, this should be important to us. 

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