Poverty is Embarrassing

Bono was right when he said this past year "poverty is embarrassing." Poverty is a spotlight that shines a light on every corner of our hearts. You want to feel the weight of The Fall? Look into this child's eyes. Spend one morning on the wards and the drastic nature of the expulsion from the Garden will have a whole new stinging sensation. In America, I rarely feel that life is really all that bad. The immense exile that has been placed on the human race very well hidden in my daily life. I have to almost convince myself that this is not the way life was meant to be. Sin has this light feeling in the States. Here in the clinic the suffering of every human heart is displayed in the open.
For some reason God is uniquely concerned about the poor. Over and over again in the Old Testament he rebukes Israel for oppressing the poor and needy, for trampling them underfoot. God even says that the ultimate reason that Sodom was destroyed was for their neglect and injustice towards the poor. This prideful attitude led to their debauchery which we so often hear about, but Ezekiel lets us know that there is something deeper going on here.
In all that I have been exposed to over the last few years, all the sermons, all the books I have not had a very good answer for why God is so focused on the poor. Why are righteousness and justice for the poor so unrelentingly linked in the whole unity of the Bible?
Why does God focus so much on the poor? Because there we see our need for him more clearly. Today I saw a man with a parotid tumor that had distorted his face far beyond comfortable viewing. There you see the weight of the Fall. There you see our race's own propensity to rob God of his glory and take for ourselves what is not rightly ours. When you see the sick and oppressed completely incapable of saving themselves you see much more clearly your status before God apart from Christ. Jesus said "blessed are the poor in spirit" but we are so middle class in spirit, blind to our total depravity thinking that there is something good in us that actually did deserve redeeming. God never says become poor and then you will be more righteous, that would not be true. God says if you are poor, trust in me. If you are not, you will show your righteousness by your love. Jesus promised that the poor would always be with us. He is not about ending poverty necessarily. God knows we need the poor. He is not unjust in sustaining the poor because He knows this is life is but a vapor and the treasures that lay in store for those who love him are far beyond any of the fleeting pleasures of this time. Do I really know that? God knows we need the poor to show us more of Himself, more of ourselves, more of where we have been, more of where we are going. One the day when every tear is washed away and this too shall be made right.