Can Poverty Be Taught?
It’s another dinner conversation with the little people, and you never know where it will take you. This night the middle child suddenly recalls the Christmas boxes we filled months ago.
Who opened those boxes, he wants to know. Who’s playing with those toys? I don’t know, I tell him, but I’m sure it’s a child far away who might not have opened anything else on Christmas Day.
He absorbs my answer and says, “I’m glad we’re not poor.”
Oh, honey. I’m glad too. I can’t imagine facing dinnertime with an empty cupboard. Every time I dole out another of the boy’s pink asthma pills ($100 for the bottle with good health insurance!), I wonder how some parents do it. I imagine them holding out for the really bad wheezing, hording those pills like gold.
Oh, honey, I’m glad we’re not poor.
But there’s something I don’t like about his comment. Something that doesn’t feel right. Am I sensing a bit of “us vs. them”? As in, we are the ones who fill the Christmas boxes (thank you, Jesus), and they are the ones who open them? Yet I know that when it comes to Jesus’s kingdom, we’re all in it together. No “us vs. them.”
What did Jesus say to the rich young ruler? Give it all away, then come follow me. But, he couldn’t do it. Can I? Will my kids?
I’m not asking my kids to give it all away. I’ll keep on giving them gifts as long as there’s still money in the bank. But, there are a lot of ways to be poor, and maybe it’s time to teach a few of those?
To be poor is to know that you don’t have what it takes.
To be poor is to know that you’ve got nothing worth standing on.
The poor in spirit give it all away because they know it was never really theirs. The poor in spirit willingly let go of everything in order to stand on the Rock. They know that money, good looks, good health, good behavior, none of it is as strong and steady as that Rock.
Oh, my little boy, I’m afraid you’re wrong. We are poor. Maybe not in our bank account (though who knows what tomorrow holds), but we are poor. We aren’t good enough. Or strong enough. We’ll never have it all together. But, there’s One who was and is and always will be.
He is our treasure. Our pearl of great price.
Death by Pine Tree
This is the kind of landscape I’m dreaming of. Cold. Bleak. Beautiful. Beautiful because there is not a drop of tree pollen for miles.
It seems that the trees here in northern Florida are trying to kill me. Maybe they have no such intention, and it’s only that my lungs have misunderstood. They think the thick yellow dust swirling through the air is reason enough to close up shop. I try to convince them otherwise with pills and inhalers.
It’s been a long month, and pollen.com tells me I still have a ways to go.
I’ve never experienced anything quite like this. It’s left me feeling nostalgic for Chicago’s concrete jungle. Living there I did do some sneezing in springtime, but this? I’ve never known anything like this. I’ve always said that I’m a winter person. That I need that season of cold, sleepy hibernation. It seems my body agrees. There’s always something blooming in Florida, and, apparently, my lungs have had enough.
For now, I’m sticking close by my bedroom air purifier. I have time to be inspired. Time to write. Somehow, though, I’ve found the life of the bedridden to be less than inspiring.
Still, whenever I open my Bible I find promise after promise of healing. Who knew God had so much to say about healing? Now I know, though the promise of it belies my reality. So, I’m holding tight to the promise and waiting.
Waiting.
Breathing.
Waiting.
“Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal.”
Job 5:17-18
Wisdom and Innocence
Wisdom is a treasure, a precious cargo worth seeking, but it can also feel like a heavy weight threatening to sink our ship.
Through wisdom we know that our days on this earth are brief. Like a whisper of mist. Like a flower that blooms and fades. We are little more than grass and flowers, and we know that “grass withers and the flowers fall” (Isaiah 40:8).
Through wisdom, we do indeed learn “to number our days” (Psalm 90:12).
How, then, do we hold on to wisdom’s treasure without sinking under its weight? How do we keep our spirits from tipping over into despair? “For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief” (Ecclesiastes 1:18).
The voice of pragmatism and reason would likely advise balance. Seek wisdom but not too much. In other words, don’t overdo it!
Yet, there is nothing balanced or reasonable about following Jesus. He is a lion and a lamb, not some creature halfway between the two.
The best way may be the utterly reckless way. Pursue wisdom with everything you have. Hold tight to it and weep. Feel the grief of that knowledge. For here is another paradox: there is laughter in these tears. Lady Wisdom “can laugh at the days to come” (Proverbs 31:25).
This is the laughter of children, the laughter of innocence.
To be like Jesus is to be utterly wise and thoroughly innocent, a serpent and a dove.
To be wise and innocent is to feel grief and joy that haven’t been dulled by fear. It is the wide-awake life he promised us.
“Awake, my soul!”
Psalm 57:8
