Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Abraham Lincoln said that God must love the common poor people, He made so many of them. God also loves the rich people, but they need to be reminded that all they have is given them by His grace.
Poor people seem to be especially dear to the heart of God, according to the Bible. They are usually happier, says Jesus: "Blessed [happy] are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). "The needy shall not always be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish forever" (Psalm 9:18). "The helpless [poor] commits himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless" (10:14).
David was once a poor person; he tells us about it: "This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles" (Psalm 34:6). He "delivers the poor from him who is too strong for him, yes, the poor and the needy from him who plunders him" (35:10).
Don't be ashamed to be poor, for there is a special privilege that you enjoy. David says, "I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me" (40:17), and all kinds of blessings He has "provided from [His] goodness for the poor" (68:10). If in addition to being poor, you are "sorrowful," you are being "set ... up on high," and He "hears" you in a special way (69:29, 33). For those who are "poor and needy," He is in a special sense their "help and ... deliverer" (70:5). It seems almost as though God is partial to poor people!
For sure, Jesus knows how to sympathize with them, for when He was on earth, He was poor, all His life. A carpenter accustomed to building houses for other people, He says He "has nowhere to lay His head" (Matt. 8:20). If He had left temporal heirs, they would have gotten nothing except His clothes--and the soldiers got to them first.
If you are poor, lift up your head and rejoice: you have something in common with Jesus. Remember, He hears your prayer, and He will answer.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 15, 2001.
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