Mi Casa Es Su Casa [but like, not rn]

"I'm convinced that God did not mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves." - Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution

“Did you get gas yet?”

“No.”

“Go get gas.”

I closed my laptop and headed for the first place I could think of – QT. Did a quick u-ie when I saw a line of 20 cars behind one open pump and raced toward my next best idea – the BP with the most shootings on that side of town. I figured it would be less crowded, which turned out not to be true, but all of the pumps were open allowing a speedier flow of traffic.

I’ve learned to hold loosely to results as more often than not the situations I find myself in are impossible to manipulate...or maybe just not worth the effort?? Stay tuned for more on that one. Regardless, control usually stems from self-serving purposes. Let go of your self and it turns out life is much more enjoyable when the fruit of your labor is not just for you.

Tension - around me and within me. When I finally pulled up to the tank after my guardian angel sporting a green 90’s minivan yelled at several cars, stepped down out of his driver’s seat not once, but twice, and ensured I made it to the tank right before him, a war of thoughts broke out within me.

“Should I fill all the way up? I am on empty. What if it runs out before my guy coming after me? Maybe I’ll let him siphon out what he needs from my car. Should I fill up halfway? But what if this shortage lasts a long time and I run out of gas and can’t go to work. I can’t do my job if I can’t drive and no one could cover me. Well maybe they could? But they would run out of gas too. I guess we would just have to cancel things. But how do I even know how much gas is left? I mean, I got here first so that should count for something?” Click. Full tank. I waved a thank you to the car behind me who honked back before I hopped in my car and pulled off to safety.

It was the first time I’d felt that sort of panic in quite some time. It was as if I’d entered a competition of Survival Of the Fittest...or Smartest? Or Quickest? Or Kindest? All I know is the inclination to help others at my own cost felt both irresponsible and foolish.

Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself.

Yikes.

While an argument can surely be made (by me) to take care of yourself in order to take care of others, the pendulum can easily sway from one extreme to the other, justifying either end with a spew of personal experiences. Setting these experiences aside, let’s focus on a few principles brought to you by quotes I don’t know how to eloquently tie into my own writing so a bullet list is what you get:

--> “Redistribution is what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines.” – Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution

--> “The most important thing we have to redistribute is ourselves.” – Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts

--> “We depersonalize the poor [what we don’t understand] so that we don’t feel responsible for their lives.” – Claiborne

-->“Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work.” - Corbett & Fikkert

-->“I would suggest we need...neither the prosperity gospel nor the poverty gospel but the gospel of abundance rooted in a theology of enough. As the Proverbs says, ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.’” - Claiborne

Loving your neighbor does not just mean being nice. Loving your neighbor requires sacrificing control of your tomorrow’s wellbeing and putting your trust not in your neighbor to return the favor or do as you see fit with your gifts entangled with strings, but in a God of enough. This God created you, me, and everyone we cast to the side as an expense of our self-preservation and pursuit of happiness, for community.

Do what you may and justify what you must. But to end, I will leave you with one last quote:

“We take care of the world by taking care of each other. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.” – Desmond Tutu