The poor so close, a Kingdom so Capable

Kind of similar to that last post, I thought I might say something about the poor that live near us. I was reading "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennen Manning a while back and he talked about something that has stuck with me. He talked about a man in Mexico, very close to the border, that he had gotten to know on a mission trip. The Mexican man had many who were dependant on him for their most fundamental of needs. Manning was able to forward a decent monetary donation he had received to the man in Mexico and in return he received something like 5 letters of gratitude...daily. The man's appreciation was overwhelming even on paper. But what does this mean? As the kingdom of God how should we respond? I've read some statistics and it appears that if we gave something like half of our tithes to the needs of the poor most poverty would be eliminated...globally. I recently heard a Rob Bell sermon about a similar topic, and in discussing the implications of the American ideal with terrorism he said, "It's very difficult to hate the ones that feed and care for you."

A clean water well to sustain an entire African village for a lifetime: around $3000