Lent XXX

After my father's death, my mother took me and my sister and moved us back to her hometown, Waycross, Georgia.  When we first arrived in her home and my birthplace, we lived in a duplex apartment that was under the shadow of the city water tank and just a block off the railroad track.  Under the circumstances, life seemed good.  In my adult years a friend of mine named Jim asked me where I went to Elementary School when I moved back home.  When I named the school, it was the one he attended as well and he commented with a laugh, "You lived on the poor side of town, too."  The truth was I did not know when I was living there.  My adult view enables me to see that it was a tough time.  I remember a man who was poor sitting on our back door step eating a meal my Mother fixed for him and handed him out the door.  He was surely poor, but I never thought about being poor. 

 

Though we had very limited means, my Mother still found a way to give a meal to someone in need.  It is not easy for us to actually get involved in meeting the needs of those who are disadvantaged and down on their luck.  We tend to let others do our giving to the  poor.  We do it, but not directly.  We give to church missions to the poor, or to the Salvation Army, or to some local charity, and they help the poor, but we never really see them.  They remain invisible to us.   The poor are indeed with us.  We know it in our heads, but actual contact is a rarity.

 

The Scripture really does not let us off the hook.  It keeps reminding us to care for the poor and others who have little of the world's goods.  In fact Jesus makes it clear that how we respond to the  needs of those who are hungry and thirsty and sick is no small matter.  If we take the Word seriously we may be able to put their needs out of our mind in the present moment, but there will come a day when He will not give us such an option.  According to the Words of Jesus, a lot hangs in the balance when it comes to our finding some way to share our share of the world's riches with the poor.