I am sitting here reading a missionary newsletter article about a squatters' community, called West Beach, in the Dominican Republic. West Beach is a desperately poor neighborhood where tiny shacks built of rough concrete blocks, salvaged lumber, and rusty tin sheets are crowded side-by-side along a polluted waterfront. The streets are dirt, or mud when it rains. There is no electricity. Each house is not more than ten feet wide and twenty feet deep with a primitive latrine out back. Prostitution and drug abuse fuel the local economy. Children are sent out to work each day to help poor families survive. Many do not have birth certificates: they are "non persons," deprived of government services.
When the gospel is presented to these distressed people, they are unconstrained in their response! They are starving for meaning in life. Not only do they POSSESS nothing, they have been told they ARE nothing. That God loves them enough to send Jesus to give them eternal life is more than they can imagine. Should it surprise us they are desperate for God’s love?
In America, even the poorest people have hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, and a color television set. And the average middle class family has at least one secure income, medical insurance, a 3-bedroom house, and two cars in the garage. With the abundance of worldly comfort, it is no wonder America is so spiritually impoverished! Jesus said it was more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Those who find their self-worth by comfort and prosperity are never desperate for God—“full” of possessions, spiritual appetite is quenched.
If you had nothing in this life, and if you had to live in the squalor of West Beach in the Dominican Republic, would you be more desperate for God than you “currently” are? If your honest answer is ‘yes,’ maybe you need to make a trip to West Beach with me. Evidently they “possess” something we don’t! A spirit of poverty and holy desperation!
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