2 Corinthians 8

I've been reading through a chapter a day of the Corinthians and read 2 Corinthians 8 today... Paul tells the Corinthians about the Macedonian church who gives financially despite their extreme poverty and are able to give even beyond their ability...! "They urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord's people." It was not about oh, there's this need we have to fill because we're obligated, but they wanted the privilege of partnering with God's ministry in this way. It also reminds me of the story that Francis Chan's wife shared about how when they went to Asia to visit the poor and they would take the amount of rice they normally ate and cut it in half, and put the other half in a bag/container and donated that each week to the church in order to provide for other families who didn't have food to eat O.O

And the most mind-blowing verse of this entire passage--"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." The implications are huge for us as Christians/Christ-followers/mini-Christs, aren't they...... O.O

Pentateuch reflections + Ruth and God's heart for the widows

So this post is like months late!! But basically what I wanted to say is that one of the big things God was showing me through my reading of the Pentateuch was that the poor isn't just a charity case or this distant people group we're supposed to be praying for because the Bible tells us to defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, and plead the case of the widow. But rather, they are our BROTHERS AND SISTERS!! I saw that mostly in Leviticus of all places O.O!! I feel like lately, God keeps affirming that this is a right view.... might be the longest post ever if I detail it more... so I won't!

We read through Ruth in PRIME a while ago (yeah.... the trend here seems to be long overdue reflections), and basically the Scripture screamed at me about how much God looooves and cares for widows... !! And I'm also reading through Luke with the middle school girls, and read Luke 7 yesterday about how Jesus raises a widow's son, her only son, and v. 13 says that when he saw her, "he had compassion on her." wowwow

Poverty in Genesis

Well Kristal forgive me for taking the first post of the new year but what's done is done :).

In the beginning, I think it's safe to assume that there was no poverty. Genesis keeps telling us that "God saw that it was good" even telling us that things were "very good" on the sixth day. Poverty is another distortion and twisting of God's creation.

Genesis is a book of beginnings. In particular, we see the beginning of humanity's collective descent into poverty. This spiral contains individual lowlights that show us that no one is immune. Lot, the only righteous man found in Sodom and the only one saved from God's wrath, ends up drunk and the father of his own grandsons (Genesis 19:30-38). Jacob cheats Esau. Esau vows to kill Jacob. Jacob runs. Jacob and his uncle go back in forth in conning each other (Genesis 27-31). Joseph angers his brothers with his arrogance to the point that they consider killing him and end up selling him off as a slave (Genesis 37:12-36).

However, Genesis also marks the beginning of God's plan to pull us out of poverty. And how does he do this? He fills our poverty with his fullness. I want to highlight two ways that God deals with poverty. The first is Sodom.

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." -Ezekiel 16:49

So why did God destroy Sodom? In their spiritual poverty, they stopped caring about others' material poverty. I would call this the fullness of God's wrath.

The second way is the story of Joseph. In it we see the worst kinds of poverty highlighted to extremes. I've already mentioned how Joseph was sold by his brothers. (The ancestors of Jesus were not always the best of people. But out of their poverty, God pulled out the greatest of our riches.) We also see Egypt and Canaan wasted by a terrible famine for 7 years. And what does God do here? We see God's hand guiding Joseph out of his poverty to becoming second-in-command of Egypt. In addition, God uses Joseph to ensure that a multitude of people do not die in seven years of material poverty - famine (with the side benefit that Jesus' ancestors also lived through famine).

It's easy to get depressed reading this book of beginnings. Humanity fails completely and utterly and keeps doing so from the start. The bright spots are somewhat dimmed by their imperfections. It goes without saying that we cannot save ourselves from our own poverty.

If our poverty is a lack then only God's fullness can fill it!