Thursday, January 14, 2010

so rich

"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

22Blessed are you when men hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

23"Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.
24"But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Luke 6:20-25

I'm reading this book called City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre. It depicts life in the slums of Calcutta, amongst the leperers, the pariahs of the pariahs. As I'm reading it, I'm amazed at how much love, joy, compassion, and hope these people have. It seemed like the poorer they were, the more they were willing to give and give up. It reminds me of my time in Africa. So poor in the material, but so full in the spirit. I go downtown to talk to the homeless. Again, you see people holding onto and being thankful for what they have, even if it's something as small as laughter. And compare it to our culture. Sometimes the more we have, the less we're willing to give. And then it dawned on me:

When people have absolutely nothing, they focus on (and are thankful for) what little they do have. But when people have everything, they focus on what they don't have.

This is apparent in our rich culture. We have everything, but why aren't we happy? Why can't we find joy? We're looking, but we're looking in the wrong place. We buy things that we think will make us happy, we wear clothes that we think will make us look good, we do things we do so we can create this image of what we want people to see. But, that's never enough...and it will never be enough. If we keep doing those things, we will never truly find joy. We're mistakenly filling our emptiness with material things when what we really need is in the spiritual.

I'm not saying that we need to be poor to be happy, but we need to open our eyes and try to see how blessed we are. We need to shift our attention from what we don't have, to what we do have. And by doing so, we realize how much excess stuff we have that we don't need. Ultimately, we realize that we only need God. Having realized that gives us strength to give up what we don't need. It allows us to be free from worldly riches. We become, in a sense, poor, yet, so rich. "Blessed are those who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven"

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