DID YOUR NEIGHBOR EAT?

If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother. For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor in the land_ Deuteronomy 15:7,11

Let me say this in a very specific way. There are two reasons as to why we have the poor and they never cease to be among us:
1- *Disastrous Sinful World*: Some people are poor because of disaster preparedness…accidents, diseases, and demons

2- *Choices*: Majority people are poor because of their individual wrong past and present choices. What we choose _to_ and _not to_ today determines whether we will be the needy of today and tomorrow or not.

Then the biggest number of the poor is due to the choices of those I call the big brothers. The big brothers who invented *paper money* which have birthed what we know as *Debt*. God has blessed this world with enough resources but the big brothers through the system of *survival for the fittest* have selfishly gathered 80% of these blessings to 1% of the entire 8 billion people of the world.

Did you know that only 66 individuals in our world today have the wealth that can make the lives of 6 billion people better, if they decided to share?

What we see in Deuteronomy is a God who has interest in the poor and holds us responsible for those in need. As Christians God wants us to remember the poor and the needy.

It is good to give food to your neighbor’s kids when they walk in your house, but you could do better if you bought them (family) a sack of posho and beans (I mean if you can) than giving them leftovers.

Stop throwing food in the dustbin, God has his poor people who need it…the cloth you are turning into rags to clean your tiles, could be a good sunday-wear to someone out there.

Did you know that the food shopping you do and pocket money you give to your child is an annual school fees to some needy child somewhere?

Yes we cannot help all the poor and neither can we eradicate poverty due to the reasons I have above but am telling you, throwing one fish back to the ocean makes a difference.

In my primary school, since the age of 9yrs I used to sell newspapers and I always entered class at around 10:00 in the morning after selling newspapers (I was actually nicknamed at school :owamawulile ..meanig: newspapers vendor). My school fees depended on that hustle …one of my clients at Kyambogo ITEK I used to sell the papers to, looked at me and asked why i was selling papers in class hours…

I narrated my story and she asked me for my report card, brought it, she looked at it and she decided she was going to pay for me and I did not have to report late to school…this woman did not help all of us the poor kids in her community but she helped me… Now tell me that am not useful to you today? Well, if I am any useful today, it was because of this woman. ..

God blesses us not that we become pools of his blessings but he blesses us that we become flowing rivers to reach out others and bless them to…next time you are on bus, pay for someone being devoured by the taxi operator…i could on and on but what am saying is… HELP THE POOR.

God bless you, I invoke TRUTH, REASON and FAITH.

Pr ITM WHITE
The Gospel Hawker