“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.” Before I came on the Race, I thought Jesus must have turned a little too much water into wine before he said this. I could not imagine how the poor are blessed, or how the Kingdom of God was anything like living in poverty. When I was young, shortly after my parents got a divorce, our family lived below the poverty level, and it seemed far from blessed, especially for my mother, who had to work constantly just to make ends meet. For the longest time I thought Jesus must have simply had a minor lapse in judgment while giving his speech on the mountain side.
When I first began the Race, and for several months into this experience, I really struggled to see any value in living in the conditions that most of the world lives in today. Poverty makes it difficult to have the things we cherish so much in the States; things that make you comfortable, things that entertain us, things that we believe will fulfill us. However, God was going to show me the truth in Jesus’ teaching in an unlikely place, which I’ve noticed seems to be how he likes to do things.
One day on the way to a school to talk to children about why they should: stay in school, not do drugs, and stay away from rap music (all the important things, you know) it began to rain. Our pastor quickly led us to a nearby home where we were shown amazing hospitality and were allowed to wait out the storm. After the rained stopped we began to make our way home on dirt roads and through fields that had been transformed into mud pits. By the time we reached the house, I had so much mud on my feet it felt as if I were wearing snow shoes.
While sitting on the couch after making the trip back home, I imagined ways to get the mud off of my shoes and feet. Burning them or cutting the bottoms off were my two best options I thought. It was then that I experience Jesus in one of the most tangible ways I have in my entire life. Two women (who had been helping us throughout our stay) brought two large basins into the room and called us to sit in chairs positioned beside them. They then commenced to wash every one of our team members smelly, mud covered feet, while smiling as we giggled because Americans have ticklish feet. I’ll be honest, I got a little choked up at seeing this level of servant hood.
It was after this that I started to ask myself again what Jesus meant when he said the poor would, “inherit the Kingdom.” I thought about how when you are poor you must be interdependent with the community you live in, and how many of the people we lived with and worked alongside had the “what’s mine is yours” mentality. I thought about the appreciation they had for little things, running water, electricity, and each other. I realized what I had always known, that these were the things the poor are blessed in, and these things are far more valuable than anything I owned or could buy back home.
I say all of these clichéd things to show that when we actually experience and internalize the truths Jesus taught, it changes our outlook on the world, and alters what we value and seek after. I know now why He stood there on the mount and proclaimed the good news, that the world’s perspective is wrong, and truly “blessed are the poor”.
Thank you for reading, I am just under $2,000 dollars away from being fully funded, if you would like to help this journey continue you can do so by clicking the "support me" link on the left side of the page, or emailing me directly: [email protected].
Thanks again,
Garrett
