Are You a Friend to the Poor?

"Do you know the name of a poor person?" a young man in his twenties who was sharing about his experiences as a missionary in Moldova posed the question to me in church. His phrase was tricky because if he'd said, "Do you care about the poor?" I might have tossed it in that drawer where you keep all the stuff you've heard a million times and are supposed to ponder but probably won't do much with.

When he asked if I knew the name of a poor person he exposed a glaring gap in my Christianity: Whose name did I know? Not whose face had I passed on 21st Street on my way to grab coffee; not what homeless man had I handed a dollar for the paper he peddles at the stoplight; not what anonymous tsunami victim had received an online donation I'd made. Whose name did I know?

I was left to consider this very important question because if I didn't know the name of a poor person, I didn't really know a poor person. (This is one of the biggest problems with going to church — the possibility of getting all convicted and stuff.) I always knew that if God's heart was for anything it was for the least of these: the suffering, sick, needy, uneducated, foreigner, lost, lonely — this much was clear. And it's true that these were people I cared about, prayed for, and on whose behalf I tithed, but how many of them called me friend? Who had my phone number, been to dinner at my house, or sat beside me at church? Without condemnation, I had to recognize that I was someone who cared for the poor mostly from a distance but who had yet to intimately involve herself. My first step: Learn a name.

In the Law of Moses God commanded the Israelites to leave their extra sheaves, olives, and grapes for the alien, fatherless, and widow — for all the people who didn't have what the Israelites had and who didn't have the means to get what they had. At the end of this recurring command the Lord gave His people an intriguing reason for why He required this, "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this" (Deut. 24:22, NIV). Didn't God want them to leave their excess food for the poor and outsider because these people were hungry, because they needed community, because they couldn't provide for themselves, because He loved them? Wasn't that why? Oh I'm sure those were all reasons, but I believe God first had to deal with that sneaky mind-set, the one that tries to trick us into thinking that when we step over a stalk of wheat to leave it for the poor we're doing something really noble, plain over-the-top gracious. That we're going above and beyond by giving away what is rightfully "ours."

The Lord was staving off this kind of thinking by saying, "Hold your fancy horses. Remember you used to be slaves too! Don't forget to tap into what that felt like." The Israelites were no strangers to poverty, oppression, or powerlessness as ones who had once been enslaved in Egypt. It was only because of God's deliverance they were now free, only because of His goodness they were blessed with flourishing fields and bursting branches. By remembering their once low estate, they were poised to welcome the foreigner, fatherless, and widow, not out of self-righteousness, guilt, or duty, but out of the love God had shown them.

Last night I served dinner to an Iraqi couple and their 2-year-old daughter, a family some of my friends and I have gotten to know. I'd hoped that chicken, broccoli, and couscous were safe selections to serve these well-dressed Middle Easterners, though I sensed I may have been pushing it with the hot apple cider. I was going for the American autumn experience, and judging by their first and only sip, this went over moderately.

As we settled around the table I asked them why they'd left Baghdad to come to America. The husband replied, "Because there are less car bombings here," and then he broke out into hysterical laughter. (Safwat's a sanguine.) His wife was less buoyant, confiding that the war had been devastating and that they'd fled here as refugees hoping to find jobs but so far without any success. My eyes welled up as she spoke because her suffering was not that of a nameless Iraqi, but it belonged to her, a real-life woman with a name, Rida. As the adults carried on, Rubaa fingered the icing on her cupcake and tapped her shoes on the hardwood floors, just like any other baby girl in a bright red dress who wanted the room to be enchanted with her — some things are the same everywhere.

When it was time for them to leave, Safwat shook my hand, Rubaa blew me a kiss at her mother's urging, and Rida kissed my right cheek, left cheek, and then back to my right cheek again (it's that third one I always forget). As we said our good-byes I realized what a privilege it was to know their names, because knowing their names meant I was getting to know their stories. And knowing their stories reminded me in deeply spiritual and emotional places that I, too, was once a foreigner outside of God's kingdom, but because of Christ, I am now a daughter.

This is an excerpt from Nehemiah: A Heart That Can Break.

Discover more Bible studies by Kelly Minter.