One day while my daughter and her friend sat at our kitchen table coloring, I overheard my daughter’s friend announce, “I don’t know any poor people.”
But that wasn’t true. At that time, my family’s annual income dipped slightly below the U.S. poverty line. My husband had quit his corporate job without another job lined up to pursue teaching.
Our poverty was invisible to the others around us; it doesn’t necessarily look or act a certain way. We survived our experience partly because we were savers. But the real reason we survived is because of all the others who came along side of us as Christ’s hands and heart. For almost a year, someone anonymously paid our electrical bill. Family members and neighbors left fresh produce on our doorstep; others sent care packages.
We now understand the true meaning of grace and hope. God’s grace was right in the middle of it all. And that’s the best kind of hope imaginable.
This message is excerpted from “Grace in poverty” by Heather Villa from the August 3, 2015, blog of Women of the ELCA.
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