Your Challenge is Their Compassion

If you are an adult and you have found yourself 
in a financial position where you must maintain a tight budget, 
I have some encouragement for you.

Whether you are single, married and/or a parent, it is okay if you have to make choices and sacrifices to get by. It can be frustrating when you must choose “I wish I didn’t have to wear these frumpy clothes but I need to buy food” and it must be scary when you have to make a choice like “pay the rent or eat?”. I can only imagine it is even scarier when you aren’t a family of one like myself, but instead a family with tiny little dependent children. Then the choice becomes “pay the rent or feed my kids?”.

I sincerely hope your situation has not ever become that bad.

But if it has at times, take comfort.

If your situation is manageable, and you have a roof, a set of wheels, food on the table and clothes on your back, the sacrifices are most likely only a matter of weighing need with want. Perhaps you are living in a tiny condo, driving an older car that isn’t the most fuel efficient, eating what is on sale and wearing hand-me downs. Perhaps you can’t afford a new house, a new car, fashionable clothes ( well…er, maybe you can if you read my blog on how to look trendy on bottom dollar deals) or organic groceries. Maybe your weekend is spent at the gym or watching TV but never going anywhere that costs money.

Maybe you haven’t been on anything other than a stay-cation in years. It’s ok, you have a simple life and you also have the makings for one of the most important functions of the heart God designed us to have:compassion.

Compassion is a type of love, you know.

This is not to diss the wealthy, but it seems that people tend to become more selfish when they have all the comforts in the world. I know this is not always true, but in the media I see many instances of selfishness that come from a person who has everything. The most recent example I can give you: Rihanna. The pop star, an idol to many girls in their teens and 20’s, has done charity work and raised money to help people. Thank goodness for that! But what she was headlined for on a celebrity gossip bit on the radio over the weekend is what caught my attention. She and a new boyfriend went to several clubs in LA and spent $17000 on drinks and entertainment.

$17,000 is almost as much as I make in a year, and I’m a family of one.

$17,000 could feed a family of four for a year. Or it could buy them a minivan so they could get their kids from A to B and get to their jobs. If they didn’t have a car and they were struggling to get by on blue collar jobs, this would be a tremendous blessing.

Does it make you just a little sad that someone who has that kind of money as expendable income would just throw it away on a night of entertainment? What does she have to show for it now? Probably some good memories but that is all.

I personally wonder how that money could have helped people.

I know if I came into big money, I would not want to spend it that way.

I have a hard time with the idea of spending $250 on a Coach purse

Because I know how many homeless people $250 can feed.

If I were the lucky winner of the lottery, or if I became an entrepreneur and find myself to be a millionaire in a couple of years from now, I wouldn’t forget the years between the end of college and the year I became that millionaire.

Those months of living paycheck-to-paycheck,

having to ask my parents for help with things.

Having to give up on some childhood dreams

of travel or hobbies that would cost money.

Gratefully accepting a free meal from a friend.

Forgoing things I wanted or even needed at times.

The feelings of depression over not having a reasonable solution, the fear that things won’t improve, the doubt at times that God was listening.

I won’t forget it because there are millions of people out there for whom life will always be like this. And millions more who can’t even pay the basic bills because their job isn’t enough or their family has less than they do.

Have you ever heard the term “walk a mile in their shoes”?

This is literally what it means. Be in their situation, if even for a moment,

And really take a good long look at your heart and understand what they probably feel.

Why do addicts want to go to a twelve step recovery process with other addicts?

Because the other addicts understand. Someone who never touched a substance may get the gist of the pain the addict feels, but they can’t get down to their level and see eye-to-eye. There is a big difference.

God calls us to be compassionate, which is easier when we are in touch with life’s hardships. If someone who comes from a posh lifestyle, who has always had everything, encounters someone who is destitute on the street, they may say “oh that’s too bad, here is a dollar” and send them on their way with some pocket change. Someone who has been down to their last dollar with an uncertain future ahead, regardless of their walk of life now, is most likely going to encounter that same person and feel heartbreak and want to do whatever they can to help.

I received a great deal of inspiration about this topic a few years ago from a Christian book. There was a short story in it about an adventure in the life of the book’s author. He is a pastor and at one point he wasn’t all that successful. He had just started a new church with poor results. No one was turning up and he was questioning his career and God’s will for him. It was in that dark, frustrating time of feeling like a failure that God used him to have compassion on a community of low income individuals. Because he understood personal struggle, he was successfully able to rally a team of people to fill a van with groceries and use them to reach out to a community of prostitutes, drug dealers and impoverished families. It was only after his struggle that he was able to walk in their shoes.

The moral of my story? If you wonder “what’s with this rough patch of financial strain I’m in the midst of?” Don’t feel so down. It may be a consequence, but it is not a “punishment”. This is not God tuning you out. It is God allowing you to brave through a challenge so you have the strength to help someone else.