To endure poverty that is thrust upon you unwanted is one thing; you grumble at your lot and wish you had more money. But to be content with poverty, actually to enjoy its discipline and privation, is another. And that immediately makes us think of Jesus--a hard-working peasant who in later life said He had not where to lay His head. And He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit …" meaning, they are the truly happy people.
Wealthy people are seldom happy. It's not poetic fancy but hard truth that "godliness with contentment is great gain." I could take you to many homes in East Africa where I know people who have very little of this world's goods; they barely have the "food and raiment" wherewith to be "content," but they have the sunshine of happiness in their homes.
There's a beautiful hymn by Anna Waring that was in the old Hymnal, but it's been left out of the new one, probably because its sentiment goes too much against the grain of modern American philosophy. She says: "I have a heritage of joy / That yet I must not see; / The hand that bled to make it mine / Is keeping it for me. / There is a certainty of love / That sets my heart at rest; / A calm assurance for today, / That to be poor is best."
Wow! Of course! Such an idea must never be promoted in the richest nation on earth! But it's Bible teaching. No, not that abject, grinding, painful poverty is good--of course not; let's be reasonable. "Food and raiment" are necessary; and the One who had not where to lay His head doesn't want you be like that--He wants you to have a roof over your head, yes, that doesn't leak, and a bed to sleep in. And He wants you to have the necessities of life, which today probably mean a car and a refrigerator.
My friends in Africa probably don't have those things. But the principle is the thing: "a person's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he/she possesseth" (Luke 12:15). "More abundant LIFE": the Good News is not that Jesus merely offers it to you; He GIVES it to you. Receive it! Don't resent it!
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: December 4, 1997.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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