February 27, 2019
Deuteronomy 15:11                     
There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.
New International Version (NIV)
                 Have you ever been poor?   A friend of mine and I were comparing notes on poverty recently.  We remembered expressions like, “Poor as Job’s turkey,” “So poor we couldn’t go window-shopping,” “So poor we couldn’t afford to pay attention.”  Jerry Clower has the show stopper story.  He said when he was young they couldn’t afford plates so his mother kept the syrup lids for them to put their food on.  As they sopped the gravy and syrup his siblings started them spinning creating havoc at the table.  So his mother nailed all the lids to the table.  Clower said that he and his family were so poor that they sopped the heads off of the nails.

                In the end, poverty is not funny.  At one church we served a young mom and four children living in a cardboard house.  They pieced it together out in a pasture near a pond.  Our church bought an old van to go and pick them and others up to bring them to church.  Often I doubled as pastor and van-driver.  We put an “acapella” cassette in the cassette player and sang at the top of our lungs, “John the Revelator, he wrote about the city of God.”  I wasn’t much older than the students we picked up.  The church built a nice parsonage on the church property.  After a tornado devastated a trailer park, we left the front door unlocked on stormy nights so that people who lived nearby could come in and be safe.                 

                In ancient Israel, God made provision for the poor through his people.  He urged them to be generous to people in need.  In verse 4 of chapter 15 he said, “There need be no poor people among you . . .”  In the New Testament church, the Christians decided to fulfill this by feeding the hungry among them.  Like Barnabas, some gave sacrificially to meet the needs.  Later the gentile churches sent offerings back to Jerusalem to care for the poor in the church.  In a sermon, Jesus blessed the poor.  They knew they were not self-sufficient so they ran to God.  This is still happening around the world.  In gratitude for God’s goodness, Christians in the church can still care for people in need.  So we take an offering each time we partake of the Lord’s Supper and we share with those in need.  In our city, there are still so many in need.
Pray with me:    
Father, we thank you for your kindness to us.  You did not save us because we were so successful.  We come to your cross on level ground.  Nothing in our hands we bring.  Simply to your cross we cling.  Help us to see others and ourselves from your point of view.  You are our only hope.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.  
This year our Every Day with Jesus readings will follow The Bible Project Read Scripture Plan.  Copies of this reading plan are available at Tallowood Baptist Church, or download 
the app at readscripture.org.  Read through the Bible with us in 2019!
Joyfully, 
Duane 
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