We are the ones to make a brighter day

Jesus said in Matt 26:11 ‘The poor you will always have with you’. This has proved true. While several strides have been made and efforts been ongoing for decades, the global and local situation seem to just get worse as Pope Francis says “It is true that global wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities have also grown, and new poverty arisen.” 

The World Bank says this about poverty rates in 2024  “Around 700 million people live today in extreme poverty – they subsist on less than $2.15 per day, the extreme poverty line. After several decades of continuous global poverty reduction, a period of significant crises and shocks resulted in three years of lost progress between 2020-2022. Low-income countries, which saw poverty increase during this period, have not yet recovered. In 2022, a total of 712 million people globally were living in extreme poverty, an increase of 23 million people compared to 2019.” Meanwhile in Uganda it is no different, a Unicef publication of 2023 says “Poverty reduction trends decelerated in 2023, with 41.7 per cent of the population living in poverty. Multi-dimensional child poverty is still high, at 44 per cent, and the monetary child poverty remained at 23 per cent.”

So what is Poverty?
An Unknown author says and I concur that “Poverty is the thief of dreams.”  Amartya Sen goes on to add context by saying “Poverty is not just a lack of money, it is not having the capability to realize one’s full potential as a human being.” and as the bible says in Jeremiah 5:4 “These are only the poor; they have no sense; for they do not know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God and in Hosea 4:6 “My people perish for lack of a vision”. So we can sit and debate all we want about the real cause of poverty……but I concur with what Ian Paul writes in the Preach magazine that “Scarcity of resources is a sign of a world gone wrong—and where there is scarcity, there is then competition, and the strong trample the weak.”
That being said the following are the Solutions and what I believe we can do about it as Anne Frank says “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” and Bishop Desmond Tutu emphasised “The African concept ubuntu is the essence of being human— that a person is a person only through other persons, that my humanity is caught up in yours. I am fully me only if you are all you can be.” 

Ancient biblical wisdom had already given us the following advice on the subject and I quote, Deuteronomy 15:11 – ‘Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’ The Psalmist in  82:3 further advises ‘Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.’ Isaiah 1:17 goes on to say ‘Learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.’ and in the new testament Paul advises in 2 Corinthians 9:7 ‘Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.’ while John who had walked the earth with Jesus reiterates in 1 John 3:17 that “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth!”

Indeed even the World recognises that only love for one another will bring lasting solutions to poverty as seen in their lyrics in the famous song We are the World sang in 1986 at the height of the Ethiopian famine “We can’t go on Pretending day-by-day that someone, somewhere soon make a change. We’re all a part of God’s great big family. And the truth, you know, (God’s) love is all we need!

In conclusion: I agree with Helen Rhee (Phd) who writes in the Westmont magazine ….”The task of caring for the “widows, orphans and the poor” and other socioeconomically marginalized groups (such as people with disability, the elderly, the sick, etc.) constituted faithfulness to the gospel and was never separated from the essential self- definition and mission of the church. The gospel proclaimed and the gospel embodied were never pitted against each other, nor did they compete for the loyalty of the FAITHFUL.”