Saturday, February 15, 2014

Learning all the time....

I intended to grab a quick breakfast with a friend before work. It’s something that I rarely give a second thought. But on that particular morning my typical, distracted, fog of “busyness” was disrupted when my friend offered a prayer before we ate.

His words were not remarkable. That’s not what got my attention. It was the simplicity and fierce sincerity of his words, as profoundly holy as any I have ever heard spoken in a Church. His intimate knowledge of poverty had taught him that “our daily bread” was truly a gift. Through his gratitude and thankfulness for that ordinary bacon-egg-and-biscuit breakfast he shared that sacred knowledge with me.

Jesus once told a group of wealthy party guests: “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind” (Luke 14). I don’t believe his goal was to move the poor into more exclusive social circles. The aim was to save those affluent guests from their spiritual poverty. It was an attempt to break through the camouflage of polite convention and reorient them toward God’s new reality (kingdom).


I like to think I am different but that isn’t true. Although I'm not as influential and well connected as those first century party animals, I can be just as oblivious. But I am learning. I am learning that any significant amount of time spent among people who struggle against poverty and hunger changes your perspective on reality. It also radically changes your experience of God. I wonder what our experience of God would be like if we took half of our meals at a table with God’s poor?