Last year I decided to take a road less traveled from Northern to Southern California. Rather than using the tradition route (Interstate 5), I chose to drive the serene and scenic Pacific coast highway. While it added nearby 2.5 hours to my trip the view of the jagged cliffs, and the waves crashing upon the rocks was breathtaking, and will in its immediacy leave one breathless. However, just a few miles north are an altogether different dynamic, split by four lanes of carefully placed highway. On one side is the audacious display of gigantic homes belonging to some of the California’s most wealthy people, while on the other side of the hundreds of miles of tar, asphalt, and gallons of yellow and white paint are where migrant workers toil and labor in the most austere conditions.
I am certain of the millions of people that traverse the roadway annually there are countless “ooo's” and “ahh's”, of the landscape’s abundant beauty and the towering million-dollar real-estate along the way, but scarcely I suppose will any wonder about or even acknowledge the workers in the field. Does our substance outweigh our humanity, where the divide between us is so great that we just don't care to acknowledge the existence of the other? Does our loving kindness have limitations, or can it reach beyond our selfishness, our need for self preservation and become selfless, absent of our need for reciprocation? Imagine the toil associated with their labor, sunrise to sunset, every day the same, the sun and moon greet them each day, but seldom do they receive a word of encouragement, thanks, or gratitude. While their labor is often inhumane, they do something few would venture to do.
There are those that would mock them, accuse them of impropriety, simply despise them because they are different, or often feel they contradict what we've come to associate with our commonly displaced worldly (not Biblical) values. But, if the basis of our faith is measured in how we entreat one another, then we must look far beyond the things that benefit us personally, and seek to care for those that suffer most, the wounded, despised, and broken hearted.
Today’s podcast is titled.
Poor, Destitute, and Forsaken
James 2:5
5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
According to a 2021 survey, it is estimated that nearly 500,000 people in the United States are homeless, with approximately 17 out of every 10,000 being identified as so daily. Just as alarming is 11.6% of the nation’s population lives below the poverty line, that’s 37.9 million people, respectively. We are all a fraction away from being categorized the same. How do we view the poor and destitute, how do we see the humanity of those without shelter or food. Do we frown upon their circumstance, suggesting they are deservedly in their existing condition, because they (personally) chose to be there, do we smugly look away as if they are undeserving of our time and attention?
Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.
If we lay claim to the blessedness of God, how can we boldly make such a proclamation, and not be moved by the suffering of so many others. We assume the worst of them, as if pests, persistent in their pleading for what they’ve neither worked nor toiled for, but scripture reminds us once again in
Psalm 24:1-3
1 The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. 3 Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?
