God's love for the poor

God’s heart for the poor

This week we had Kit Danley who has been working with the poor in Arizona for over 30 years. Kit and her husband started Neighbourhood ministries which is an amazing ministry that touches so many different aspects of life in their community in the rough part of town. If you want to check out their ministry go to their web site: http://www.nmaz.org

The focus of this week was to look at how God sees the poor and also to go through some of the practical things necessary for starting up and continuing a ministry to them. The first day we went through some scripture to find out what God says about the poor, we have used this technique throughout the school so it was not new to me but this time we went more in depth into a few scriptures, here is an example:

Deuteronomy 24:14-15

“Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.”

-        The creator of the universe has something to say about wages! He has something to say to employers.

-         It is a sin to withhold payment

-         Do good to others even if there is no benefit for you, even if it costs you something. If there is no-one holding the employer accountable they can get away with a lot but God is watching and will call them to

account!

-          God heard the cries of the African slaves in America and He answered.

Another thing we talked about that stood out to me is that among the poor in ghettos there are two types of people; those that get out of it and those that don’t. The difference lies in how the people got to the ghetto, if they are there due to a series of unfortunate events like both parents lost their jobs and had to move somewhere cheaper they are more likely to get back on their feet and move somewhere nicer. But those that have lived there all their lives and their parents before them tend to have a different mentality and are unlike to get out of the ghetto on their own. I realised how important it is to understand this when working with the poor, you need to know their background.

That leads me onto something that had challenged me; that is the need to really understand the whole community in which you work, it’s history, the good, the bad and the ugly, what is it like today, who is working there and are the y effective, what does the community want... It seems much easier to rock up to a town and start working with the street kids but if you don’t understand the community and build relationships with them you will not really understand why these kids are on the street and you will not be able to make lasting change.

I know I have my work cut out for me when I get back to Mali; fitting into a new community and building relationships but to do that I will need to learn the local language. I am very grateful that I have friends there who have lived in the community for years and can help build those necessary relationships.

I felt this week of lectures was very practical and presented in a way that I could grasp and then at the end of the week we went to visit two different ministries to see how they got started and how they are run. The first was a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts; the second was an orphanage for street kids from the red light district and it was really interesting to visit both of them and see how they and God are changing the lives of children and adults in need.

This week was the second to last week of our local outreach ministry to the kids in the red light district and that is a little sad. I felt like we were starting to get  somewhere with the kids as we were building up relationships but this last week there weren’t so many of the regular kids there so it felt like we had taken a bit of a step backward – just in terms of starting relationships from scratch again. After having been to the orphanage and hearing the horrific stories of how the kids have been treated at the hands of their parents and then looking at these kids we work with, I can’t help but wonder what sort of lives they live, what their family backgrounds are and if they are kids in need of rescue??? Those questions can only be answered when you have strong relationship with the kids and their families, something we are not able to do by running a program for them once a week – which in itself is not a bad thing as the kids are hearing about God and learning to place their trust in Him.

Well ... that was some of my ponderings for this week, come back next week for more!