GIVE: Yourself.

“Jesus said, ‘When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.'” (Luke 14:12-13)

~

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness.”
—Mother Teresa

Here is our (my) tendency: We want to give. We want to support good causes. We want to feel good about giving. But we also want “the good life” and we want to climb the social ladder and keep company with those who have the most desirable qualities—the educated, those with great personalities, those who live like us. We want our children to go to the best schools. We want to live in the nice neighborhood.

Or, if I want to be really embarrassingly honest: We want to give to the poor but we don’t want to look like them or dress like them.

We want to make sure the lines and distinctions are clear:

We’re helping them, we’re not one of them.

Ouch. Anybody else?

Jeff and I have been slowly wrestling through this. We live in a culture where social status is huge—it’s very popular to give to charitable causes, but it’s also very popular to be popular.

Here’s the thing: this week we discussed how the best place we can spend our American dollars is on giving overseas, to actually saving lives, alleviating absolute poverty, and spreading God’s word to corners of the globe that have never heard the truth. But what about here? How can we bless the poor here?

By inviting them to dinner. 

By living by them. By being with them. By hanging out with them. In Total Church, a mother in the UK described her experience of poverty like this:

“In part it is about having no money, but there is more to poverty than that. It is about being isolated, unsupported, uneducated, and unwanted. Poor people want to be included, not just judged and ‘rescued’ at times of crisis.” (79)

As long as we are concerned with maintaining distinctions and lines of social status, we will never truly love the poor. We might give a lot of money away. We might become great advocates for them. But as long as we think of ourselves as separate from them, we will never truly identify with them in such a way that they are included, welcomed, embraced.

In order to give our money away, we need to grow in humility. We must recognize that we are not the most important people on the planet, and that others are actually worth us giving our resources.

But the next step of growing in humility is being willing to not just help them, but include them, invite them over.

Become one of them.

Isn’t that what Jesus did for us?  Jesus could have easily sent down a “rescue mission” from heaven but remained separate from us. He could have done some cosmic substitution and taken away our sin by revealing Himself in some spiritual form and having us believe in Him in that way.

But He didn’t.

Jesus moved into our neighborhood. He became poor. He gave away all His status, glory, rights, privileges, preferences, in order to live as the poorest person, to become one of us. He humbled Himself beyond what we could even imagine. The God of the universe becoming a eating, drinking, sweating man with regular bodily functions, desires, weaknesses. He blended in. He didn’t walk around like a hero, wearing a crown and stooping down only long enough to give us a hand-out. He moved into our neighborhood and became one of us.

Perhaps, then, we could go without the latest style of clothes or live in a less desirable neighborhood? 

Perhaps in order to maximize the effectiveness of ALL our resources (time, finances) it makes sense to give the priority of our finances to those in absolute poverty overseas or those who have never heard the gospel, while giving the priority of our relationships to the poor right here in our cities.

Again, it’s great if you can go befriend people in Asia, or if you give money to local causes. But for ordinary Mr. & Mrs. Jones who are just trying to make best use of their limited resources, consider giving more money overseas and giving more time to the actual people who live in our cities and communities. Invite them to dinner. Re-read Jesus’ words at the top of this page and Mother Teresa’s words and ask Him what that means for you …

{Thank you for traveling this road with me, learning and growing. We still have so far to go, but grateful to God for His patience. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the ideas presented this week… Will you share? Thanks so much for sharing. Have a great weekend.}