Fight the Curse
“He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
He seats them with princes, with the princes of his people.
He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children.
Praise the LORD.”
Today’s Text: Psalm 113 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
Praise is the natural, common sense response of … the filthy rich who have no compassion or concern for the poor? … the happy and prideful mother who has no empathy or sensitivity toward the woman who can’t bear children?
Jesus said that there would always be poor people with us, and we have to assume that He meant, only until He returns and does away with sin and death. But maybe some Christians will interpret His statement to mean that we don’t really need to be concerned for the poor (and by extension, the oppressed and marginalized) at all. That would be a mistake.
If we understood the full counsel of Scripture, we would know that God has a deep concern for the poor, the widow, the fatherless, the barren, and so on. God has a deep, deep concern for the powerless and the down-trodden—for those who are sick, for those who are depressed, for those who are suffering for no fault of their own.
Most wealthy people I run into seem to have the attitude that the poor are poor because they are lazy. On the other end of the spectrum, many people seem to think that the poor are poor and the rich are rich because of systemic inequality. Personally, I believe that those two opinions may be more connected than people might realize.
There’s no point in getting into a debate about those matters here. I do think that the wealth gap in this world provides a good indication of why there is so much suffering. A quick search on Google tells me that the wealthiest 1% of people living in the US own over 37% of the assets. The bottom 50% hold just 2.5%.
More than anything, the word of God strongly suggests to me that the great wealth gap in this world is because of the curse of sin. The curse of sin is such that everything we need to live becomes commoditized. And that might not necessarily lead to systemic poverty, except that the curse of sin causes people to idolize wealth and horde it for themselves at the expense of others.
God never intended it to be that way. God wants all of humanity to have a share in the abundance that He has provided for us on this beautiful earth.
Praise is the natural, common sense response of those who have compassion and empathy for the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the suffering and long for, pray for, and take action to fight the curse of sin in this world.
Father, You have made this earth for us. And You have given us everything we need to live and to thrive. Forgive us for taking Your abundance for granted. Forgive us whenever we try to selfishly horde it. But thank You for all that I have. But change our hearts so that our attitude is to share in Your abundance and not to idolize it. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
