Lessons Learned by the Blessing of Poverty
Child labor was seen as it's proponents as a way to relieve poverty for families. That was just a justification for greed. Education then was understood to be the real key to moving out of the tenements.
Source: Wikimedia
See No Evil
Poverty is only important to the public when the middle class start to use that term to describe their future. The chronically poor never benefit fully from the slight swings from left to right in the political arena. They benefit from the social action that is left in place after the pendulum has swung the other way. It is never a swoop of justice that changes things in the long run. It is only the movement of inches that better the lot of the poorest of the poor. We only care about the economic cliff when we ourselves are about to fall off.
When poverty is widespread as it was in the Depression, those who fall from the middle class learn lessons that hopefully will lead them to remember the chronically poor.
Source: Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)Wikimedia Commons- Public Domain
Mindful of the Blessings Bestowed
Really if you think about it the time of counting and thinking about your blessings runs from Thanksgiving to New Year's. At Thanksgiving we are supposed to be thankful on a national and personal level for our current blessings. Most of us just do the holiday rush and food overindulgence. Christmas is our time to be thankful for the gift of Christ to the world.
Again, we just think about the gifts we have to give and what we would like to get. We could think about how the gift of Christ has blessed our lives. The New Year is a time to count our blessings of the past year and our hopes of blessing for the New Year. We many time use it to pledge to make those improvements we think will bless our lives, that we just somehow never achieve.
It is the time of year that even the pagans celebrated in order to return the blessing of full light that spring brings. It is a time when in the past the farmer was surviving of the blessing of the crops from the fall harvest and hoping for the blessing of good weather for the planting of the spring crops. It is the time of year where the blessings of past, present, and future collide.
President Johnson's poverty tour in 1964th War on Poverty was not won, but some of the social programs have lifted some out of poverty and made it bearable for many.
Source: Wikimedia Cecil Suagdon Public Domain
Blessing of Poverty
I could focus on the blessings of past, present, and future. I want to look at the blessing of poverty, because it is something most considers not a blessing. It is a blessing for the lessons it teaches and the joys that it only can bring.
Poverty can be the source of endless futile worry that zaps one of all happiness. There is a unique peace that comes when you finally realize that there is not job, sweepstakes, or kind relation who is going to change your status of poverty. It is out of your hands and you can only count on the blessing of God to survive day to day. The blessing of poverty can be the end of constant anxiety and true reliance on God to see that your day to day needs are met. Keeping the heat on is not a task of worry in your life, but a testament to the grace of God. Each month you are not cold is a small miracle. It brings joy to be blessed with the necessities of life. It also helps you to count the blessing of having the essentials because there are many who do not.
Poverty brings the joy of hope. When you have hit what you consider the rock bottom and there are no easy fixes you latch on to hope. You face each day with the hope of the blessing that you will get what you need to survive that day. There is not far off hope that you can retire in the Bahamas or travel in Europe some day that only brings a distant twinge of joy. You get the joy of knowing that at the end of the day all is well in the moment. Your joy is in the moment.
We play a game at our house. It is if tomorrow you had a large amount of money what would you do. Even my kids get great joy out of using at least half of their imaginary money to make someone else happy. Being poor teach you the joy of sharing with others and the blessing of the common good as the highest call of God to each of us.
The hope of having brings as much joy as the actual act of having. My children know how to be grateful and therefore hopeful. When they are blessed with something extra even if it is small it is a source of large joy.
The best lesson of poverty is that you learn happiness, joy, and blessing is a choice. Money cannot buy happiness because it is the individual who chooses to feel blessed. Now this is not to say that a mother who has a dying child and cannot save them do to lack of money feels blessed.
Lessons Learned and the Dignity of the Poor
There is a level of poverty that is simply evil and the reality of poverty is an evil that does not please or show the glory of God. It is the existence of a sense of blessing in the lives of the poor that shows forth the Glory of God. It is the reality of the poor themselves working towards justice in the world that show us the true grace of Christ.
The past few years have been difficult for a whole group of Americans who have found themselves doing things that were not part of any experience they have ever had. They found themselves losing homes, collecting food stamps, and taking jobs below their skills and education. Many will as the. Economy improves .move back into the middle class. I hope that there will be lessons learned by many, who never counted their blessings when they were blessed. The,”I did it” attitude of the apathetic middle and upper classes to the plight of the poor in this country has hopefully softened. The great recession did not leave those who had done nothing to improve their lot in life in the proverbial bread line; it left those who had dedicated their lives to economic gain there as well. Poverty, many times a life altering disease is not respecter of persons. We however, should learn to respect our fellow citizens and their right to a basic level of human dignity that no one should be deprived of. This is what the blessing of poverty should ultimately teach all of us.
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