We are known by God. People whose skin we will never see were made by God; there is no person whom the hand of God hasn’t intimately known. So though we don’t see them, if we say we love God, yet spurn the people His own hand created how is the love of God in us? Are we not deceived?

But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

1 John 3:17

We cannot turn away from our own flesh and feel no pain. We ache every time we overspend. We hurt ourselves every time we don’t give and every time we don’t give generously. Sin breaks our back with its yolk binding us to things seen rather than to our God and millions of real people unseen. We worship and serve our God whom we do not see, but we ignore his people whose emaciated bodies we can see. We fly by photos, turn news channels, and we hear of Ebola and the outbreak and all we can think is Lord save us. Perhaps we might pause long enough to feel sorry for such people, but not long enough to linger in prayer, to tell our God that we care about the ones He made and died for. We are busy, so we just click on to the next thing. Indulging ourselves to death.

Is this not the fast which I choose… Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Isaiah 58:6a-7

Do we consign them to death so we can buy a dress or something equally as perishable? No, it’s not wrong to buy, but sometimes we slip into indulgence, don’t we? Our gluttony and greed doesn’t just hurt us, and if there’s conviction of it, we should all repent of such gross sin. And maybe we should repent even if we feel nothing at all… that’s a sign of sin too, hardness of heart.

May the Fathers heart intertwine with our own and may His affections to direct our own.

Let us not be lost in the miserable wasteland of our own greed. We are not finding a “good sale” we are selling our own souls to a god that will burn. We are trading our souls for the world when we profess godliness and break our purses and pour them out over our greed. This is American idolatry. This is the religion…we worship ourselves to death…

But Christ.

Christ Jesus who broke Himself on a cross so we don’t have to keep bowing down to false images…false gods. 

This is not about social justice or just another guilt trip. This is about godly living. This is about the justified people of God acting as such. This is about not turning our eyes away from the suffering, but participating in it as if their children were our own, because, in Christ they are. This is not a reminder just for you (shaking my head with a weak smile)… this is to remind me… When riches increase don’t set your heart on them lest they puff you up and make you dull to the unseen realities that are truer than what we see. There is an “upside down kingdom” that is coming, and in that kingdom the least of these are the greatest. So let us serve them with all our might. They are our own flesh and blood. And how have we forgotten that our freedom, our joy, our reward is bound to them? Whatever you’ve done to the least of these…. Remember? The Father’s eyes ever upon them, may He use our hands to ever serve them.

But the brother of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position; and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away.

James 1:9-10

We, the unquestionable rich, are not untouchable royalty, looking out over the world shaking our heads in disdain and in sorrow that leads us to do nothing. We were made for more than this…. We were made to glory in our humiliation to serve those who are greater than we.