What Does Poverty Mean?
What does poverty mean to the poor? What does poverty mean to you? What does poverty mean to God?
Fasting isn’t an instrument to get God to hear our prayers or to help us master a primordial impulse or to accomplish anything. It’s something you do when circumstances are bad enough that you don’t want to eat and it would seem wrong to do so.
Extreme Poverty Is Not a Given for This World
A major success in a poverty-reduction goal for the new millennium — halving the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 per day — was probably reached three years ago.
Crackers or Mud?
Recently, I read about how the poor in Haiti have to mix mud in their food to make it go further. Mud. They mix it with flour to make a few more biscuits or simply fry it up with cooking oil or lard and salt to give it a bit of taste. Imagine a mother…
Keeping Up With the Joneses
If you finished high school, you might as well be “Dr. Jones” to those who have no chance of getting an education. If you eat three full meals a day, Jones. Jones. Jones.
The Poor Will Not Always Be With You
During a party at Simon the Leper’s, Jesus says to Judas Iscariot, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). The misinterpretation of this statement has justified a fatalistic belief that, by divine decree, the world will always have poor people.
What is the Definition of Poverty?
The absence of a clear definition is a serious problem for organizations whose missions are to eradicate poverty or, in our case, to release children from poverty.
Tell us how you understand and define poverty, and then in future blog posts we’ll explain the basis of our holistic approach to ministry and what our definition and…
What Does Isaiah 58 Have to Do With Poverty?
How does Isaiah 58 relate to extreme poverty? How does it relate to oppression and corruption? Does Isaiah 58 have anything to do with these topics?
How about its relevance to how we serve the Lord today? What are your thoughts?
How big is the problem of extreme poverty? Three billion people worldwide and 1 billion children deep. But despite the size of those numbers, many people at Compassion believe that we can eliminate extreme poverty in our generation, that we can remove or utterly destroy it.
You might think we’re “drunk on the spirit,” that…
Fewer Children Are Dying
Good news from the government is pretty rare. Good news in the media is even more rare. So when I read this headline the other day, I smiled: “WHO sees good progress on UN health goals for poor.”
According to a recent study by the U.N.’s World Health Organization, good progress is being made on health-related Millennium…
The Church’s ability to eliminate extreme poverty is just a matter choosing to do so. We used to say that 40,000 children under age 5 die every day of hunger or preventable diseases. Today, that number is 24,000. These statistics show that in 20 years the number of children who die every day of hunger…
Is our ability to eliminate poverty just a matter of how we interpret the Bible? John 12:7-8 is the verse that has captured our thoughts as we think about the poor. The verse that is now the most remembered about the poor.
And yet, when Jesus spoke, he was not talking to us. His use…
Eliminate Poverty: Can We Do It or Not?
On the subject of eliminating poverty, how do we reconcile the seemingly conflicting messages of John 12:8 and Deuteronomy 15:4?
Poverty Questions … and Answers
For the past two weeks we’ve published a series of poverty questions for you to consider. We appreciate everyone who submitted comments to the posts, and we extend our congratulations to Judy Tremblay and her enormous brain for answering the most poverty questions correctly and becoming the proud new owner of a brand, spankin’ new…
The Price of Greatness
I heard on the radio the other day that it’s probably the biggest thing that’s ever come to Denver. They were talking about the Democratic National Convention, of course. And they’re right … it is big. The local news has been dominated this week by headlines from the convention.
All this political hype has me…
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