Responsively Yours

June 2005

Leftovers vs. Abundance

One of the most shocking encounters I ever had with poor people happened in Somalia in 1985. My husband, Peter, and I taught there for a summer, accompanied by our 10-year-old son, Per, and two students. At the time, Mogadishu had the charm of an old, interesting seaside city, unaccustomed to tourists. Our hosts welcomed us and helped us adapt to a new rhythm of life, including taking classroom breaks for students to pray when the call came from neighborhood mosques. We accepted invitations to local events in hopes of learning more about Somali culture, religion and politics.

One such event was an outdoor evening wedding reception at a fancy hotel. We knew neither the bride nor groom, but one of their relatives, a student in our class. We were seated close to the street on the outer rim of the festivities, near the hotel’s compound wall. At the end of the meal, we realized that a group of children had surrounded our table. At first we thought they were just being friendly. Then we realized they wanted our meal, some of which we had not eaten. We gathered the untouched leftovers and happily gave them away. As guards approached to drive them off, the children took control, grabbing the good food as well as the scraps. They left quickly, vanishing just as mysteriously as they had appeared.

Having grown up in close acquaintance with the working poor, I have long admired and marveled at the ingenuity of those who have little. I have traveled extensively in parts of the world where poverty is deeply entrenched. Whenever friends or others remark out of ignorance about the inability of poor people to forge a better life, I respond with stories about the remarkably creative survival strategies that many in poverty use to keep from getting crushed under challenges those of us more accustomed to the middle class cannot imagine. When we bother to get acquainted with the poor and the obstacles they face, we learn a lot.

Despite this respect for poor people and their survival skills, I have no regard for poverty. It stinks, literally and figuratively. It also sucks the life out of many, particularly children, literally and figuratively. Since that night in Mogadishu, I have often wondered what happened to those children. What life-skills did they learn on the streets, and to what use did they put them? Did they become more sophisticated thieves as they matured? Or did they turn their talents to small trade or other more productive work? Did guards ever catch them, and as in some cities, kill them? Did desperate parents ever get reunited with their little loved ones?

From the perspective of women in mission, leftovers and table scraps for the poor won’t do. They aren’t good enough. They fall far short of Jesus’ clear teachings on money and wealth, a topic he addresses more than any other in the Gospels. How we get and spend money fundamentally reflects our faith understanding. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also … ,” Jesus says (Matthew 6: 21).

Where is your treasure? Where is your heart? Are parts of these precious possessions in mission, witnessing to God’s love for a wounded world? I can’t save the street children in Mogadishu, but I can minister to ones just like them in Brazil and Haiti and the hundreds of other places where United Methodist Women devote their resources to living out God’s promise of abundant life for all.

Consider your contribution to United Methodist Women. Pray about its significance in your life and in the lives of women, children and youth in poverty and other dire circumstances. Pray that we as women in mission will gain the courage of our conviction to give joyfully from our abundance, not from our leftovers. 

Jan Love
Women’s Division
Deputy General Secretary