poor on Parents

God of grace, love, and hope: Your grace comes when we least expect and don’t deserve it. Your love comes when we can’t comprehend why but we need it the most. Your hope comes at just the right time t...

Father–Father of the Lord Jesus and our Father: You’ve blessed us beyond imagination. You redeem us, forgive us and lavish Your gifts on us: Thank You. You choose us, when we wouldn’t choose ourselves...

Father–Thank You for the opportunities You put before us every day to make a difference; and for special friends who serve You in all they do. Thank You for those faithful in their callings: whether ...

Father God, too often we show preference to those who appear to have it all together, to those whom we consider complete: the self-motivated, self-made, and self-sufficient. We honor the rich and look...

I recently had lunch with a former British boarding school chaplain. He remembers being with the boys in his school the morning thirty years ago that the very first pictures of widespread starvation i...

Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have non...

While I was at a concert in college, I responded to a flyer requesting volunteers to sponsor a child overseas. For years I read the letters from this little girl in El Salvador. Ruth seemed happy to b...

When I don’t have any [food to bring my family], I borrow, mainly from neighbors and friends. I feel ashamed standing before my children when I have nothing to help feed the family. I’m not well when ...

I was teaching an English class in a high-rise apartment complex full of low-income families in Minneapolis—mostly immigrant and refugees from East Africa. The tenants’ association paid for me to come...

Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfil...

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who and the places where and the days when, in memory of the bitter hours when we ...

Isaiah 58 tells us that the Lord wants us to share our bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into our homes, share our clothing with those who need some and not hide ourselves from the rest o...

We cannot know the inheritance of God without identifying with the poor in spirit, without the poverty that says, “I am naked and poor and wretched and I need a Savior or I’ll die. I’m desperate for y...

Introduction  Luke 16:1-13 isn’t an easy parable to preach on. It looks for all the world like Jesus is commending a guy who’s basically a dishonest rascal. You will sometimes see interpreters tying ...

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.

When we listen to and follow Jesus, who lived in continual dependence on his Father, we become convinced of our poverty as men and women. We realize our absolute neediness. We are all beggars. Father ...

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child and sing an...

Teenage prostitutes, during interviews in a San Francisco study, were asked: “Is there anything you needed most and couldn’t get?” Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was unanimou...

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.

We have conducted the previous exercise in dozens of middle-to-upper-class, predominantly Caucasian, North American churches. In the vast majority of cases, these audiences describe poverty differentl...

Gracious God, you tend to the earth as your vineyard, longing for it to bring fruit. You want our society and our lives to look more and more like the Kingdom of Heaven. We work against your plans, so...

He who gives of his goods to help the poor, to send children to school, to educate them in God’s Word and other arts ... he is giving to the baby Jesus.

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.

Kevin Blue has spent much of his ministry career serving the poor in inner-city Los Angeles. In this excerpt he describes working with a war vet named Clarence: Richard, Tim, Caroline and Ellen move...

O Lord, we remember before you all the workers of the world: Workers with hand or brain: Workers in cities or in the fields: Those who go forth to toil and those who keep house: Employers and employee...

We need to take time to connect with the poor, resist our unceasing cravings, and pray. But we also need to gather with friends and family, share in God's good provision, eat delicious food, tell ...

Both the Old and New Testaments indicate that caring for the poor is one of the primary indicators of saving faith (Isa. 58:1–12; 1 John 3:17–18). Doing nothing is simply not an option for a follower ...

Many years ago, I watched a documentary on the remarkable ministry of Mother Teresa among the poverty-stricken people of Calcutta. At one stage there was a moving exchange between her and the commenta...