For Such a Time as This

"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" -Matthew 25:40

Homeless cats

Like this encounter with stray cats scrounging for food in the streets of Mexico last year we often encountered old women and crippled men begging for a handout.  In addition, each evening we saw young women carrying a bundle of clothing to sell on the street.  There were many shops and street vendors doing the same so their competition was fierce.  I asked my daughter-in-law, who is from there, about these women because I rarely saw anyone stopping to buy from them.  Was this their only means of support?  She said it often was and that they were selling them for someone else and therefore hardly made any money from it.  It broke her heart, she said, when she saw them with a baby on their back as they plied the streets peddling the clothing.  There were several times that someone came up to my daughter-in-law to ask for money.  Once a young child asked for her ice cream cone.  She always gave what they asked for.  It made me much more aware of just how easy my life has been and just how much I hoard what I have.  

In today's Discover the Word program (I hope you will click the link and listen to the program) Ann Voskamp speaks about this in her encounter with Iraqi women who had lost their husbands to a brutal killing by ISIS.  These uneducated women were left to fend for themselves and their children.  Ann says after reading of the killing of these men just three weeks before she was to go to Iraq she'd thought she should change her plans.  Her husband, however, encouraged her to go, saying God had called her to go just as Esther (see Esther 4:14) had been called to help the Jews at a great time of need.  Because Ann answered the call she came home with the stories of these women which she shared on her blog.  As a result she raised almost $1,000,000 which was sent in the form of microloans to help these women to help them establish their own small businesses.  In addition, her community is sponsoring four refugee families from Aleppo and she is sponsoring a family of six herself because God has given her the means through her highly-successful books to do so.  She stressed that if you don't use your position and resources, you will be like the living dead.  Like the Red Sea we will grow stagnant and die if we only receive and do not give. 

It is far too easy to see our lives in terms of only ourselves--striving to get and then striving to keep what we have.  There is so much more each of us could do to reach out and help those less fortunate than us.

I am grateful for my comfortable life, but am even more grateful that I have the means to help those who are in need.