Kingdom Service Day 5: Relationships

"The poor don't need you, but you need the poor."  I will never forget these words spoken to me back in 2006 by Neighborhood Ministries President Kit Danley.

I had gone to Phoenix, AZ, with my family to visit my in-laws and had arranged to spend part of a day with Kit, whom I had heard speak at a conference out in Long Beach, CA.  God was working on my heart a great deal those days while I volunteered regularly at a transitional home for moms and children in Waterloo.

Kit graciously gave me a tour of the Neighborhood Ministries campus, and we ended up at a Mexican restaurant for lunch that day.  At some point in the conversation I said, "Well, we need each other, right? The poor need the rich, and the rich need the poor, right?"  Kit looked at me with eyes that searched deep inside my soul. There occurred the most pregnant pause, and then she opened her mouth to speak.  "The poor don't need you, but you need the poor."   I acknowledged her response with an awkward nod, took another bite of my burrito, and left that day knowing that it was largely for that one statement that God had hooked me up with Kit Danley.

Fast forward seven years.  God's been so good as He faithfully and gently teaches me the meaning of her words.  So much stays broken for the very reason that the rich don't really actually believe they need the poor in their lives for the sake of their own souls.  Even when we try to declare, like I did, that we do need each other, we can't seem to really believe that as long as we believe we're there to help the poor.  Not really until we can recognize our own deep depravity and poverty can we begin to deal with our power and privilege in such a way that it ultimately helps us to relate rightly with the poor.  And it takes being with and receiving from the poor to even begin to chip away at this.

Jesus, our great reconciler, desires to bring reconciliation, peace, justice, and authentic community to His body.  Ultimately, we do need each other and belong to each other.  But, perhaps we can't get to that place of beloved community until we wrestle with and come to better understand that "the poor don't need you, but you need the poor."