In Lean Times… Keep Your Heart Soft… by Giving

“Poverty” by Picasso, 1903

Although I am not a huge fan of Picasso, I do like his work during the “blue period” like the above painting. This one captures the stain, degradation, humility, and “blueness” of what poverty must be like. I say “must be like” because I have never suffered like this. I have never really gone without…

And I am so grateful, but I hurt for those who do.

It seems the USA is facing tough times economically. We must tighten our belts and prepare for leaner days, but believe me “tightening our belts” and leaner times are nothing compared to how much of the real world suffers in poverty.

My husband and I joined a medical team in Ethiopia earlier this year. Here is one post on the sum of my thoughts about facing that kind of poverty. Experiences like this bring me back to reality… to gratefulness… to the “blueness” of the cycle of poverty, to sharing what I have with others…

“If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks” (Deut. 15:7).

In times of plenty and times of lean, I can keep my heart soft by giving…