Excerpts from the World Bank’s series Voices of the Poor
For a poor person everything is terrible—illness, humiliation, shame. We are cripples; we are afraid of everything; we depend on everyone. No one needs us. We are like garbage that everyone wants to get rid of. - Moldova When I don’t have any [food to bring my family], I borrow, mainly from neighbors and friends. I feel ashamed standing before my children when I have nothing to help feed the family. I’m not well when I’m unemployed. It’s terrible. - Guinea-Bissau Your hunger is never satisfied, your thirst is never quenched; you can never sleep until you are no longer tired. - Senegal What is poverty? Is it a material thing? That person doesn’t have a car like I do, a Netflix subscription, consistent utilities, healthy food, financial security, etc. In the book When Helping Hurts, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert point out how when the poor explain their own poverty they “typically talk in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.” Corbett and Fikkert go on to define poverty more broadly than I ever had, but perhaps more biblically, “Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of shalom peace in all its meanings.” This is bad news because it means poverty is far more crushing than I thought, but also because it means I’m impoverished in ways I had never considered. It reminds me of my dad’s testimony. The son of a successful businessman, he had everything he wanted. He followed a girl on a mission trip. There, in Mexico, he watched a Christian family from a distance. Despite their tin and cardboard house, with kids in plastic-bag diapers, they had joy, contentment, and relationships of which he was completely impoverished. It’s for this reason that the day the King returned, he strolled into a Nazareth synagogue and announced the coming kingdom, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Mindy and I are committed to advancing His whole kingdom, “to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” |
No matter how hard you throw a dead fish in the water, it still won't swim.
-Congolese saying For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.. -Jesus Wesley & Mindy McKnightThis blog will address critical questions regarding our vision of ministry in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is meant to last only until we depart the U.S., with each post being 500 words or less. Archives
July 2016
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