The Power of Choice
I was recently reading a book that discussed poverty in ways new to me. He described poverty as the lack of being able to choose things. Whether that is an education, career, medicine and health, and even things like transportation and where we decide to live. People in poverty lack the ability to choose between things. Usually in their case, there is no decision that has to be made, the situation they are in decides for them.
Last week I went out with one of the groups for food distribution and we came to a family that battled poverty on a daily basis. In all the wisdom of the man of this family, in his prayer he said that this food we were giving him would soon be eaten and forgot about (which I thought was interesting coming from someone who did not have a lot and relied upon food like this to eat). But what was more important to him was that we were all gathered together as individuals who have put on Christ.
I was thinking from a spiritual standpoint that those that are in spiritual poverty lack choice as well. When someone has never heard of God, they have no choice. But, when you give them God, His Word, you give them a choice. They immediately have a decision to choose God and all his grace or… deny Him. They have been released from poverty once they have heard the Gospel, listened to Christ, and obeyed his commands.
It’s amazing because once you have given someone the Good News you have given them the ability to be set free of spiritual poverty. God has the ability to make people who struggle to feed their families, people who live in shacks made of rotten wood, and people who live under tin roofing with dirt floors… rich. They can now be rich, with God. Spiritually speaking, that is. But isn’t that what the kingdom of God is like? Our Savior? The picture of Heaven? That is what I found on my day spent in a poor community of southern Honduras: spiritually rich people.
- Michael Conatser
