Facing Poverty

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. Proverbs 10:15

A terrible truth has been brewing in me over the last two days.  Most days in Mozambique I meditate on the mystery of deep and stubborn poverty. Finding a cure for poverty of this nature is as complicated as finding a cure for cancer.  It is as troubling and terrifying as cancer too. I saw it in Lucia's eyes.

Lucia is in Project Life.  She has no husband, no home, no job, and no food. What she does have is AIDS and TB. Her breasts are shriveled and her stomach grossly distended. Her contorted face each time she moves reveals her immutable misery. It squeezes my heart like a python and I try to avoid its suffocating grasp. How did she get here? What footpath of poverty brought her this far?

Lidia also is in Project Life.  She has had two husbands, both are dead.  An AIDS patient, she has six children that are HIV+ to nurture and feed.  She doesn't have a secure job and she is too sick to have a machamba.  How does she get her food? That is what haunts me. The terrible truth is this.....the rich have everything...food, houses, jobs...and the luxury to not steal or lie. Stealing and lying are rampant here and more common than a cold. It is their expressway to exist. And if you aren't looking both ways while maneuvering this thoroughfare, you will be run over. Where is the hope?

I was teaching the Bible study this afternoon to the activistas to be taught in PL.  It was appropriately on lying but the lesson felt as productive as applying scotch tape to a hole in a hot air balloon. Then one of the activistas spoke up.  Normally she is shy and doesn't talk, and her revelation comforted me.

"I have to confess that I lied last week. I took a little bit of dried fish from a man in the market and told him I would pay him right back. I didn't have any money to pay him.  So I sold some charcoal.  When I saw him later he asked me for the money. I told him I didn't have it and went home. Then I remembered our lesson and I felt very convicted.  The next day when I saw him I paid him back."

It was a flicker of hope and a ray on the right path. She just might walk right out of her poverty.

There are two things, Lord, I want you to do for me before I die:
Make me absolutely honest

 and don't let me be too poor or too rich. 
Give me just what I need. If I have too much to eat,

I might forget about you; if I don't have enough,
I might steal and disgrace your name.

Proverbs 30: 7-9

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.
II Corinthians 8:9