Needs, wants and responses

M. was at my house today, she is struggling to make ends meet, and is hungry. Her house walls are caving in because they need a new coat of mud and her son is sick from probable water borne illness.  Poverty and need are something I’ve always struggled with. Not that I have ever experienced either but I struggle with what my response should be to physical poverty and need. I think when we moved I thought in some ways the question of what my role should be in being a part of the solution would be simpler. No longer would I have to puzzle whether or not buying a certain brand of chocolate was helping or hurting world poverty I would just be able to be actively part of the solution myself. My first clue that living among need would solve the “what to do dilemma” came before we even entered South Sudan.

We were in Nairobi shopping for our journey in. We loaded five carts of groceries and household supplies into a car and I felt totally overwhelmed. I was bringing in food for our family of six for four months and would be one of the only people in my community that was able to do so. I knew as we went in that we would not go hungry. If supplies were unable to be brought in it wouldn’t be a problem, if crops didn’t grow my family would not go hungry, if illness struck I had medicine with me to treat my family and my neighbors did not. Suddenly I was forced to face (and carry) a portion of what I’d been given and the weight of it was a lot. Each time I placed a bag in the vehicle a new thought entered my head, “My family won’t go hungry if famine strikes Melut”, I load a box of medicine next, “my family will not get sick and die from very curable diseases for lack of medication”, a box of pen and paper follow, “and my children will not have a lack of education for lack of funds to send them to school, or books or knowledge to teach them with”. You can envision the remaining thought marathon as I loaded supplies, “I don’t wonder at night how we will eat tomorrow, or if war breaks out where we will flee.” So there we are in Nairobi loading the taxi with our groceries and I started to cry. I had done nothing to deserve the blessing of food and medication. My passport alone granted me access to these riches.

When I realize how much I have been given (it still makes me catch my breath at times) I have several options of response. I can feel guilty, which is not from God and does nothing to remedy poverty. I can hide the disparity between my neighbors and myself, or I can pretend the disparity between wealth and poverty doesn’t exist.  Neither does anything to fix the problem of poverty and the disparity between us. I suppose I could also lock the door to our house, shut the blinds and refuse to see any poverty but I don’t think even shutting the blinds would be fooling myself. I think the best question to ask is not what do I do, or what will make me feel better about the disparity but what should I do with what I have been given.

So if you remember, M. was at my house today…I thought when we moved that when someone came to me with issues such as hunger, housing need and illness that the solution would be simpler, give her food, go fix her house, and of course build that woman a water filter. But as I listened to her today over a cup of hot Sudanese coffee around the table in my house that was dry and protected from the harsh elements the solution was more evasive than ever and made more so by the fact that poverty was no longer an idea or an image but a friend with a name. M. wasn’t asking for quick fixes, for money to throw at her problems or free labor, she was sharing the challenges of life. She was agonizing over the work of life, and hunger and learning valuable lessons along the way. She wasn’t thinking of herself as impoverished she was living life and dialoging not about getting more but using what she had better. As I listened I realized the problems were bigger than money, or labor or filters and it got me to thinking.

I am beginning to think that I was asking the wrong question all along. I don’t think the right question is how to alleviate poverty (although this is a good question) but rather it is what my response is to what I have been given. We have all been given gifts it is not our job to question the quantity or quality of the gift but to use it well. I have enough to eat and so I have the gift of energy, am I using the gift of energy to love God and people more? Am I using the gift of education to know God and teach others to know Him through knowledge of His word? Am I using the gift of health to bless others? Am I using my gifts well whether I am sitting along the Nile in South Sudan or in a coffee shop in Seattle? I am unsure of the answers to poverty, disparity and need now but I am thinking the right question for me was never how to eliminate poverty, it was how to use the riches I’ve been given to His glory. The answer to that question is more complex than giving of money or time or resources or knowledge and I think is worth dedicating a lifetime to figuring out.