3/25/06

God and the Poor, and International Aid

- From Bono's Speech to the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC

[All faiths and ideologies] agree that God is with the vulnerable and poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives.

And God is with us if we are with them.

It's not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

The only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor, “As you have done it unto the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.

"If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places." (The Bible, Isaiah 58)

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