Poor

My mom and dad both grew up on small 80-acre farms in the hills of Mississippi. The land was not very productive, so that made it difficult to have big harvests each year. Their families would have been considered poor people in the U.S.

I asked my mother about growing up poor, and she responded something like this: Everybody around us on other small farms was just like us, so we did not even know that we were poor. In thinking of the context of my mom growing up, there was no communication with the outside world except for a radio. On rare occasions my mother or dad would get to go to town. My mother says that a highlight of her childhood was when she got to go to town and her mother would give her and her three sisters each a nickel to spend at Sterling’s Five and Ten store.

Our family lived for several years in one of the poorest nations in the world—Burkina Faso. We were considered wealthy among the villagers around us because we had a house made of concrete blocks instead of mud bricks. We also had the only vehicle anywhere around us. We regularly ate meat. We had running water in the house, toilets, concrete floors, and a metal roof instead of thatched elephant grass. In all respects we were wealthy.

According to www.weforum.org 2021 stats, the bottom 50% of the world’s population has only 2% of the world’s wealth while the top 10% of the world’s population has 76% of the world's wealth!! In another report on the ranking of poverty in countries around the world the USA’s median income in 2022 was $70,200 (US Census Bureau says it was $70,784 so these are collaborating reports) while the rest of the world’s median income was $2,800 per year. That means half the households in America make 25 times the median worldwide income.

TWENTY-FIVE times the worldwide income – talk about being rich!

So, am I trying to make us feel guilty about being Americans? No. Here’s what I want to say.

God is watching how we handle our money—though it’s not really our money. He just loans it to us. It is going to be somebody else’s after we leave the earth. We just get to use it while we’re here on earth.

Few things test our faith and maturity more thoroughly than how we use money. It is the acid test of our spiritual maturity. Jesus says in Luke 16:11, “If you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?” (NLT). God is watching us to see how we handle whatever wealth we’ve been given.

In America we are so blessed, and I believe that God intends for us to respond by blessing others. God expects believers to be generous with our resources.

Proverbs 19:17 says, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.” (ESV).