Domestic Poverty

"He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm." - Mark 4:39

1 Year Anniversary of Ukraine War

It has been one year since Russia invaded Ukraine, plunging families into war and displacing millions. We pray on this grim anniversary for resolution.

As I’ve said before on this blog, I’m a person with spastic cerebral palsy and other disabilities. That means that – like all people, let alone other folks with disabilities! – I require access to affordable housing. On one hand, I can happily report that as I write these words, I sit at my own kitchen table, in an apartment where I live by myself. Sometimes, I need a little help getting my groceries, but I can come and go when I please, and I don’t live with too many insects!

In the early hours of the morning on February 6th, a powerful magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked south-eastern Türkiye (Turkey) near the Syrian border, killing hundreds of people as they slept, injuring thousands more, and reducing five-storey buildings to piles of rubble. A few hours later, another earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 hit the region causing even more heartbreak and damage. These two earthquakes have been followed by more than one hundred smaller aftershocks.

The calendar has turned, and so it is time (in the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem ‘In Memorium CVI’) to “ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky// the flying cloud, the frosty light: the year is dying in the night”.  It’s time, to quote the same poem, to “ring out the old, ring in the new”.

Tennyson’s poem suggests that the changing of the calendar can be an opportunity for change that has less to do with personal resolutions and more to do with ‘ringing in’ a more just, humane, and peaceable world.  As he ends the poem: 

In my late twenties I was presented with an opportunity to work with at risk youths and children who lived in post conflict Sierra Leone. At that time, I was working in Washington, DC and had a wonderful life. I loved my friends. I love the house I was living in. I was happy. At that time, I was working to support people who were homeless and in desperate financial situations. With my friends, we wrestled with how to live in a world with so much suffering, injustice and poverty. I was idealistic and took God’s call in Isaiah 58 very seriously. 

When speaking with a ministry colleague a few years ago about the complexities of serving individuals who are being commercially sexually exploited, they wondered aloud how we can expect someone to leave their exploiter when the person’s immediate needs are taken care of through exploitation. This ministry colleague reflected on a situation in which a woman living in dire poverty in another country was faced with the decision between being sexually exploited or letting her children go hungry.

“Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Peter 1:16b-19) 

On a warm Sunday evening in downtown Thorold, a young couple and their two girls walked down the street.  Suddenly, the smell of dinner caught their nose. They peeked inside the school door only to be welcomed and invited to stay for a meal. They met new people and ate their fill. To their surprise, this gathering had been organized by a Christian group called a “missional community.” That’s what our church plant, The Table, calls ourselves: a missional community.

After a mission trip or an enriching act of charity, have you ever heard someone say something like, “I was expecting to serve them, but really they gave me more than I gave to them”, or “in the end they taught me more than I ever taught them”. Have you ever heard of or personally experienced this unexpected exchange? I certainly have.

Greg Paul from Sanctuary Church in Toronto once said something to this effect: “If you plant a church for the middle class, the poor will not come. However, if you plant a church for the poor, the middle class will come”. Planting a church which celebrates socioeconomic diversity is a picture of God’s kingdom to come and a means by which we can participate in the Kingdom of Jesus now.  At the same time, socioeconomic diversity in churches is brutally hard. Most churches in North America grow through affinity groups.