Blog Action Day: Poverty

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:3 (NIV)

Though it is only Wednesday, it has already been a long week. My family needed some comfort food. For us, that means fried chicken, rice and gravy and green bean casserole. I turned the healthy chicken breasts I planned to grill into a breaded delicacy dripping with fat. My youngest son and I love white gravy or chicken gravy as my grandmother called it. Don’t ask me for the recipe. I do not know it. I just make it like Grandma did. If I were New Age, I would say that when it comes time to make chicken gravy, I channel my grandmother. After taking the chicken out of the skillet, I drain the grease, but leave the bits of brown crispy coating that flakes off the chicken. Then, I add flour, salt and pepper, mix it all together and brown it some more. When it is nice and toasty, I pour in some milk and stir with a fork until the gravy almost boils and gets thick and pasty. Voila! Manna from heaven. Youngest son and I pour it liberally over our fried chicken and rice. Yummy. I am almost embarrassed to write about our dinner as today is Blog Action Day, and the theme is poverty. Obviously, we are not poor if we can afford to pour milk into flour and make gravy. We eat very well around here. In fact, even our animals eat better than most humans around the world. Sure, sometimes, close to payday, I can’t go out to eat or I only fill my gas tank up halfway instead of all the way. But, really, I am not at all qualified to write about poverty. But, I do know about a kind of poverty that affects all humans, even the affluent like me. That is a poverty of spirit that Jesus talked about when He spoke the beatitudes. Here, Jesus turns the world’s way of thinking upside down. He lists situations that most would view as hardship and shows how God brings blessing through it. The Message Bible translates the verse above like this: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule.” I like the New Living Translation even better, “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” There are a lot of ways to be poor. We can drive a luxurious car and have tons of money in the bank, but when we try to live life our own way on our own terms, our spirit can be bankrupt. What I have does not make me need God less. I cannot live without Him. It is His gifts of salvation, wisdom, peace, love, compassion and the countess other blessings He gives me that compel me not only tell others about Him, but to do what I can to eliminate any kind of poverty from this world.