Sermon Illustrations

TRUE POVERTY

The second theme in our passage is to strengthen and support the weak and the suffering. My friend at the Gazette also mentioned visiting his daughter in Kenya when she was a Peace Corp volunteer out in the desert areas in the western part of the country. He said that trip had changed his mind about what it really meant to be poor.

On the trip they picked up a man and his wife who was 9-months pregnant. As they drove them to a town with a hospital, my friend asked if they had a doctor. The couple said, "No, but it will happen." My friend asked if they had a place to stay and again they answered, "No, but it will happen." My friend asked if they had any food or money to buy food, and a third time they said, "No, but it will happen."

As he said, "You are really poor when you don’t know where or how you are going to get food, when you don’t know where you will sleep, when you don’t know how you will pay a doctor to deliver your baby."

We are very separated from true poverty.

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