Are you wealthy? Or poor?

Luciene update: Surgery yesterday went well, and she is home at Val and Cesar’s house. Pray for pain management today and for God’s provision of $50,000 to pay for the surgery! Thank you!!

But God chose the poor to be rich in faith  

Isaiah 3:14-15 The Lord comes forward to pronounce judgment on the elders and rulers: “How dare you crush my people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?” demands the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

James 2:1, 5, 8 My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? … Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? … Yes indeed, it is good when you obey the royal law as found in the Scriptures: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Strong words from Isaiah today, echoed by James almost 800 years later, reminding us that God’s character doesn’t change. It’s so easy for us, who are among the world’s and history’s most wealthy, to equate poverty with crime, with character defects like laziness, with bad habits and lifestyle choices, with inferior intellect and wisdom. In so doing, of course, we elevate ourselves and justify our own ways of living.

As I sit here, though, a series of snapshots flit through my mind of people who would be considered poor by most standards who have, out of kindness and generosity, deeply blessed my life. Of wisdom and perspective I gained from the fruit of the Spirit shining through people living lives of grace within terrifically difficult circumstances. Of gentle care extended to me as a child by people living in one-room earthen floor thatched roof homes. Of friends who grew up in favelas (urban slums), who were abused and hungry and cold, yet whose hearts were wide open to God’s love and somehow carried forgiveness instead of grudges.

I feel like I’ve had the privilege of at least some insight into God’s tenderness toward his people, the ones he chose to be rich in faith, the poor.

Poverty is such a relative concept. Everyone (almost!) is “poor” when compared to some others—and wealthy when compared to a different set of people. I felt this viscerally when our family spent a year in the US when I was eleven. In our small village in Guatemala, we were considered unbelievably wealthy. Even though our house was small (especially for our large family!), we had a tile floor, and Dad devised a way for us to have running water, heated by our wood stove. We children went away to school. We each had more than one set of clothes. We ate fruits and vegetables. We owned a vehicle. We had games and toys and jigsaw puzzles and a crank record player. We had resources to help other families.

The complexity of two cultures (and ours as a third) with lopsided power and wealth sharing, occupying the same physical space in the town where I grew up (Shutterstock: Stefano Ember)

A week of travel, though, took us to a city in the US where we were considered poor. My classmates wore new clothes, not hand-me-downs. (We joked about the used tea bags included with missionary donations.) When special events came to town, they could attend. Their teenage siblings didn’t have to go to work after school as mine did, leaving me, at eleven, responsible for my four younger sisters and brother, along with housework and cooking. So they could visit each other’s homes and play after school or learn special skills like gymnastics or other sports. At age eleven, I resented being different from my peers.

But was I poor? No, I don’t think so. I had a home to go to, food to eat, clothes to wear. I spoke (to some degree) three languages. I had grown up amid two other cultures that interfaced in complex fashion in my part of Guatemala. (After I left home, my town was caught in the crossfire of a brutal, years-long civil war engendered by these disparities.) My parents were well-educated (Dad that year was earning an advanced degree in linguistics at the University of Chicago) and good at their work of Bible translation. I had been well cared for at my boarding school, learning enough that the academic part of life in the US seemed easy to me (except latitude and longitude—for some reason I could never remember which was which!).

God’s point, recorded by Isaiah, is of course about kindness and generosity, living by the royal law rather than greed and abuse. Today I am filled with gratitude, for the unexpected riches of a zillion blessings, for many opportunities to share them with others. And for daily invitations from the Lord to grow in faith.