I would like to share Mother Teresa's words concerning The Word which says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Mother Teresa and the Sisters who followed her took a vow of poverty, which she had written, saying:
"Our response to the call of Christ is our vow of poverty. This entails a life which is poor in reality and in spirit, sober and industrious, and a stranger to earthly riches. It also involves dependence and limitation in the use and disposition of goods. By this vow we freely give to God our natural right and freedom to accept and to dispose freely of anything that has monetary value. Therefore, we shall never keep, give way, lend or borrow things of money value without leave of the Superior. With regard to God, our poverty is our humble recognition and acceptance of our sinfulness, helplessness and utter nothingness, and the acknowledgement of our eediness before Him, which expresses itself as hope in Him, as an openness to recieve all things from Him as from our Father. Our poverty shoul be true Gospel poverty: gentle, tender, glad and openhearted, always ready to give an expression of love. Poverty is love before it is renunciation: To love it is necessary to give. To give, it is necessary to be free from selfishness."
Obviously, this vow isn't for everyone. It isn't scripture or anything, but it makes me think, "What have I vowed? What am I truly deeply committed to?" Are there any "vows" in your life? There are a few things that come to mind: I have vowed to never watch TV in my home, to live with and love A as long as I have breath, to always live below my means. There just aren't many. I think there are a lot of people called to live much simpler lives who never do for the sake of comfort. For that matter, I think a big percent of people in Church are called to "Sell all they have and follow [God]," probably to another country, but many never do.
I can't help but bring Bonhoeffer into the discussion, who changed my life when I read this in
Cost of Discipleship, "The difference between ourselves and the rich young man (editor's note: Matthew 19:6) is that he was not allowed to solace his regrets by saying, 'Never mind what Jesus says, I can still hold on to my riches, but in a spirit of inner detachment.'" In other words, this man was not given the luxury of a figurative interpretaion. When Jesus said those words, the man immediately knew...I must do just this in order to follow Jesus. He goes on to say,
"If Jesus said to someone, 'Leave all else behind and follow me; resign your profession, quit your family, your people, and the home of your fathers,' then he knew that to this call there was only one answer - the answer of single minded obedience, and that it is only to this obedience that the promise of fellowship with Jesus is given. But we should probably argue thus: 'Of course we are meant to take the call of Jesus with absolute seriousness, but after all the true way of obedience would be to continue all the more in our present occupations, to stay with our families, and serve him there in a spirit of true inward detachment.' If Jesus challenged us with the command: 'Get out of it' we should take him to mean: 'Stay where you are but cultivate that inward detachment.' Again, if he were to say to us: 'Be not anxious,' we should take him to mean: 'Of course it is not wrong for us to be anxious: we must work and provide for ourselves and our dependants. If we did not we should be shirking our responsibilities. But all the time we out to be inwardly free from all anxiety.' Jesus might say, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God,' and we should interpret it thus: 'Of course we should have to seek all sorts of other things first; how could we otherwise exist? What he really means is the final preparedness to stake all on the kingdom of God.' All along the line we are trying to evade the obligation of single-minded obedience."
So, what is God calling you to do? How will you interpret scripture and what the Holy Spirit is saying to your heart? The poor have been on my mind more and more recently, mainly due to the awareness my friend Jeremy is raising in my conscience. He said recently in a
really good discussion about the poor on his blog (you should check it out by the way at
Big Blue Sofa, there are several posts) basically that Jesus spent a lot of time with the poor and had a lot to say about the rich. By the way, if you think all the verses in scripture about the rich don't apply to you, such as the one about how it's harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to get into heaven, you should realize that if you have a car, running water, and electricity, you are probably in the richest 2% of the WORLD! Also, there is a sermon illustration about how "the eye of the needle" refers to a tax gate in Jerusalem. I checked it out and confirmed that while there is such a gate this is pretty much a bogus interpretation. I know this offends people who have been to the Holy Land and seen the gate and love to share the illustration, but it's true.
I didn't mean to deviate so much from my original post about Mother Teresa's words, it just kinda happened. I'll share one more thought. Anyway, we recently heard the
State of the Union Address where the president evaluates the nation's status. I think we each need to take our own little status evaluation. Come up with a good, candid speech about our own little empires and then give it to ourselves in the mirror. Today I passed Patrick on the road. He rides a three-wheel bike everywhere. Doesn't have a job and lives in a place where rent is dirt cheap. I don't think he showers much or shaves. Anyway, I've seen him around town and talked with him a few times. He says he was shot in the Vietnam War and is really bitter about life. I at least believe the bitter part. I saw him today, trying to get his bike over a curb, but I was "busy" so I drove by. I think next time I see him I'm going to take him to lunch. That's really a drop-in-the-bucket, but it's a start.
