The Needy

“ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field 

or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  

Do not go over your vineyard a second time 

or pick up the grapes that have fallen. 

Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.” 

                                                                   Leviticus 19:9,10
Do you remember the poor?
Sometime ago I gave a ride to someone I know into downtown St. Catharines. She noticed a man who appeared to be drunk calling various people around him dirty names.
She commented “drunk and it’s only ten in the morning.”
On another occasion we were near a place that serves food to the needy, when she commented, “why don’t they get a job.”
On both occasions her comments disgusted me. The man on the street calling people names was schizophrenic and wouldn’t stay on his meds.
In his case it would be easy to say well it’s his fault that he doesn’t stay on his medication. But as someone with a mental illness I can relate.
Quite often especially when you’re first being treated the medications can make you feel like a zombie.
Or you take the meds, they make you feel good so you think you’re cured and get off them only to find yourself in worse shape and quite often unaware that you need those meds.
As for the people being served food in many cases had tried to get jobs but they were in a catch twenty-two situation.
Sadly many of them had some kind of mental illness or they had fallen so far down the social ladder that many of them didn’t have fixed addresses. No fixed address made it almost impossible to get a job even if they had the skills to do so.
The above quote from Leviticus nine reminds us that we need to make provisions for the poor around us.
I hear politicians say the social welfare system should be a way of giving a person a hand up not a hand out. Sadly at least where I live it only gives a hand out despite what the politicians say.
Now living in Canada is not as bad as the United States.
In Canada going to the doctor or hospital is fully covered but it’s the things the government doesn’t cover that’s the problem  
I know several people who are on government disability benefits here in Ontario. The benefits while they give the recipient drug, basic dental and eye glasses, they system does not give them much to live on. In some cases around seven hundred dollars a month.
This when the average cost of an apartment is five hundred dollars or more per month and there’s a waiting list for subsidised housing of five years.
So with a cheap apartment at a minimum of five hundred dollars you have to take into account the person needs bus fair to get around the city which can run around a hundred dollars for a monthly pass. That leaves precious little for food and other basics.
I once asked a disabilities benefit worker if there were any programs that the government run that would help those on benefits get skills needed to get into the work force.
The answer was no. So much for giving a person a hand up.
The same is basically true for those on welfare.
Many people I’ve met that are on welfare want to work the trouble is they don’t have the skills to get anything decent.
If they do take a low paying job instantly they loose their dental and drug plans. Which if you’re disabled is necessary.
I know several people who have to take large amounts of medications costing hundreds of dollars a month. Going off welfare or disability benefits means they’d have to pay all that themselves from a minimum wage job which in Ontario is ten dollars an hour sixteen hundred a month before the tax man takes his bite.
I think we as Christians particularly the big churches with several thousand in their congregations need to start looking for ways to help the poor more than just giving them simply food as noble as that is.
There is a saying that states.
“Give a man a fish and it feeds him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a life time.”
Think of all the positive things that setting up an adult training centre in a church in the name of Jesus would generate.
Centres that as far as possible train people for jobs that are needed within the community around them.
Acts 2:44-47 states,
“All the believers were together and had everything in common.
Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
                                     Acts 2:44-47
This portion of scripture tells me that the believers ensured everyone’s need was met. Not only that it was evident to the people around them that they were doing good and thus the early church enjoyed favour with those around them.
Think about the kind of favour it would bring if the very large churches or groups of small churches got together to offer job’s training free of charge to both those in need within the church and those outside the church.
What a witness!
Think about it.