"We are Beggars"

(The following are some thoughts I wrote out on paper about a year ago and thought I would share on this blog.)

You see them on any given street corner and intersection in America.  They hold their pleas on a cardboard sign.  "Hungry.  Need Help.  God Bless."  True, their grammar may not be the best in the world, but you try to know their intent.  You also look around to see if there is a news crew hiding in a nearby parking lot filming what is going on.  You've seen the stories of such people -- begging for help only to go home in a decent 3 bedroom "shack" on the South Side.  You want to help, but you're afraid you might be one of the people they spotlight in that story.

You might be interested to know that, in all actuality, you're not that far off from the "street urchin" you shun as you turn to go to Wal-Mart or that favorite restaurant.  Now don't get me wrong, you may not be standing at an intersection anytime soon, but think about this...

Martin Luther -- you know, the guy who put the Catholic church on it's ear when he posted those 95 theses on that door several hundred years ago, carried around a simple three word phrase in his pocket.  That phrase was "We are beggars."  Obviously it was written in German, but I don't know German that well to type it out, but you get the idea.  We may not all be standing in the intersection pleading for a couple of dollars here and there, but we go humbly before the Lord in prayer.

We beg God for His mercy -- His mercies are new every morning.
We sing the song "more love, more power...more of You in my life."  We do that, but are we giving enough to get more?  I'm not going to go to the offering Scriptures here (II Cor 9), so you are safe for now.

I saw a T-shirt in a Christian bookstore that made me think of this.  It said "I'm just a beggar telling another beggar where to find bread".  Psalm 37:25 "I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous abandoned (or forsaken), or his children begging bread."  But we can tell others, "Hey, I know where you can get food.  You may not have now, but I can show (or even take) you somewhere where you CAN have...and have it more abundantly."