Can you recall how many times you have shared your money with a street kid or donated your old clothes for typhoon or flood victims? Do you actually help the poor?
Poverty has already been a great, if not the greatest, problem in our society. It has already evolved, mutated, and established a long chain of reactions; and perhaps I don’t need to discuss all about those reactions here. Just read or watch the news everyday and you can see it all there.
How many times did you here people saying “let us help the poor”, “let us eradicate poverty in the land?” Or have said that yourself?
Sometimes it’s already becoming difficult for me to practice what I preach; not what you are thinking, I am not a priest or minister either. Anyway, during discussions on social issues, I have always been saying that as Christians we learn to reach out and help the poor. However, sometimes, it is really very difficult for me to do it because of many questions and arguments left unanswered.
Last Sunday, while I was eating with my friends in a fast food, a woman approached us. She was carrying her son in her arms and her daughter was beside her. She was asking for small amount of money, according to her, to buy food. There were seven peso coins and a twenty peso bill on our table; but my friend’s initial reaction was “we’re only students.” The woman begged again for money but we pretended that we did not hear her while we continued our chit-chats and food. When she noticed that we are not going really going to give her any, she transferred to the table next to us and repeated her dialogue asking for money.
After a while, we realized what we have just done to the woman. We actually refused to help her and her children. But then we had our arguments: Helping the poor does not only mean giving them some amount of money now. Besides, it should be done in proper ways or in proper institutions. Giving a small amount of money would not actually help them; it might help but not in the long run. Tomorrow, for sure they will again beg for more thus tolerating them not to look for other alternatives other than begging and asking their resources from other people. On the other hand, we don’t even know how sincere or how needy they are.
Then, I remembered the old woman in the overpass near our school gate. If I am not mistaken, she has already been there for a long time because every time I walk through that overpass, I see her sitting on the stairs. Many times she has so many coins and bills, sometimes biscuits and soft drinks gathered in front of her. I just wonder: How much does that woman earn in a day? Where does she reside, does she still have her family? She is not a poor old woman to be pitied because she seemed not really poor. She changes her clothes everyday and I never saw her sleeping there during the night. I know because almost everyday I pass that way, and when I go home around nine o’clock in the evening after class, she is no longer there. Perhaps, people who usually pass that way have already noticed that like I do. And the people who give her the alms might have just passed for the first or second time or are really generous.
The big question is “Why are there people like them?”
Well, the question is very rhetoric. There might be no definite answer for it. But as I read the Bible, the Lord said in Deuteronomy 15:11, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open handed toward your brothers and toward the poor and the needy in your land.”
That’s it! Perhaps they are instruments so that we will recognize how blessed we are, aren’t they? Or they are instruments so that people will learn to practice charity.
Filed under: essays | Tagged: charity, help, poor, street people
