The Redeeming Power of Poverty

"I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is better," said Beatrice Kaufman more than 70 years ago.

In the decades since Kaufman -- and in the centuries before -- few have disagreed. Poverty is as limiting as it is humiliating. Most people, I think, would prefer to encounter poverty by a rare and fleeting accident, than by even the most carefully crafted design.

The "rich is better" axiom is challenged in today's selection from the devotional guide, "My Utmost for His Highest," which is a year's worth of daily readings excerpted from talks and sermons given by early 20th Century missionary Oswald Chambers (pictured).

"The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty; not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus," Chambers says, "but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, 'Lord, I cannot even begin to do it.' Then Jesus says, 'Blessed are you. . .'" (Click here for the full reading.)

Regarding the power of poverty, the media are on a pendulum: Publishing the story of a man who finds purpose through poverty on one day; and the next day publishing another man's struggle to regain his lost prerogatives and financial status. From such even-handedness, it would seem that either state is equally preferable, equally sustainable, and equally moral. They are not.

It is said that of all subjects, Jesus talked most of the subject of money. (The same could be said, of course, about The Wall Street Journal newspaper.) However, Jesus' approach to the subject was different from what many of us might take, which is to regard money as a "necessary evil." Jesus did not say that money was necessary (something The Wall Street Journal might say); and He did not say that money was evil.

To quote St. Paul, money is not the root of all evil; rather, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, and the source of much human misery. (Click here for Paul's quote.)

The doorway to the rule of God in one's life is poverty. It is there -- and there alone -- where one finds freedom from the tyranny of fear, competitiveness and selfishness.