A preacher and an atheistic barber were once walking through the city slums. Said the barber to the preacher: “This is why I cannot believe in a God of love. If God was as kind and loving as you say, He would not permit all this poverty, disease, and squalor. He would not allow these poor bums to be addicted to dope and other character-destroying habits. No, I cannot believe in a God who permits these things.” The minister was silent until they met a man who was especially unkept and filthy. His hair was hanging down his neck and he had a half-inch of stubble on his face. Said the minister: “You can’t be a very good barber or you wouldn’t permit a man like that to continue living in this neighborhood without a haircut and a shave.” Indignantly the barber answered: “Why blame me for that man’s condition? I can’t help it that he is like that. He has never come in my shop. I could fix him up and make him look like a gentleman!” Giving the barber a penetrating look, the minister said: “Then don’t blame God for allowing the people to continue in their evil ways, when He is constantly inviting them to come and be saved.

Source: Preaching Today, Brett Kays, Brownstown, Michigan. Also included in Timeless Truths: Touching God in your Daily Living, by Patty Hummel, 2004.
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In 1958, 35 year old Englishwoman Anita Goulden went on holiday to Peru to visit her brother. Anita was a widowed, single mother who owned two haberdasheries in Manchester, England. She was about to go home by way of the United States when she saw an unbelievable sight--children with tuberculosis and meningitis lying neglected and abandoned in the street in pools of their own blood. “In my wildest dream, I had never thought of human beings in such shocking conditions,” her diary recorded. “The appalling poverty; the indifference of those around. I can only liken it to visiting a store and finding all the goods priced wrongly. Precious goods worthless. Worthless goods precious.” So Anita stayed to help--for the next 44 years she stayed, only returning home one time before her death in 2002, and that trip was to buy medicine. Anita started traveling by donkey to the nearby villages surrounding Piura, Peru to find more unwanted children. Her first stop in these towns was always the pigsty, the common place for leaving physically and mentally handicapped babies with the excuse that they were of no use to their families and sent as a curse from God. “Anita’s unwavering faith in God’s capacity to answer her desperate prayers for food, clothing or housing when there was none left for the children, has succeeded in providing permanent care for the most sorely afflicted and has established a good education for 250 of the poorest children from the shanties,” states the Anita Goulden Trust newsletter. Anita’s Peruvian assistant said of her, “She has a direct line to God,” and “Thank God for the British.” Anita herself merely said, “Thank God there is a God.”

Source: “Anita Goulden.” news.telegraph.co.uk 1/03/2002. and “The Anita Goulden Trust Newsletter"http://www.agtrust.org/left_option/anita_goulden.htm.
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In a cramped space around a Kiev sewer, 15 children ragged and stinky have spent the night crowded together for warmth. They rouse now only because they have a chance to eat. They are rejected and hungry, but not without hope. Two American women, Jane Hyatt and Barbara Laiber, kindly called the “aunties” have come with milk and bread for the hiding children. These ladies are joined in a mission to reach out to children who live in the streets because of poverty, alcoholism or violence in their families. There are almost 100,000 of them in Kiev alone. These Ukrainian orphans muddle along by begging or stealing. Sometimes they work as porters or prostitutes. But they are not without hope—not without a chance for the future, because Auntie Jane and Auntie Barbara have chosen to practice “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father: to visit orphans and widows in their distress.” (James 1:27).

Source: Arie Farnnam, “Help for Ukraine’s street kids, from two US women.” Christian Science Monitor, April 08, 2002. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0408/p01s04-woeu.html
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Some years ago before the death of Mother Teresa, a television special depicted the grim human conditions that were a part of her daily life. It showed all the horror of the slums of Calcutta and her love for these destitute people. The producer interviewed her as she made her rounds in that dreadful place. Throughout the program commercials interrupted the flow of the discussion. Here is the sequence of the topics and commercials: lepers (bikinis for sale); mass starvation (designer jeans); agonizing poverty (fur coats); abandoned babies (ice cream sundaes) the dying (diamond watches).

The irony was so apparent. Two different worlds were on display--the world of the poor and the world of the affluent. We are slowly and methodically told it is O.K. to live our life of luxury while others live their life of poverty. But alas, it is not so! Heaven’s reversal of fortune shall one day awaken us to the fact that we have separated ourselves from the agonies of others and that we did not care about others who suffered.

Source: Brett Blair, Sermon Illustrations, 1998 adapted by SermonCentral PRO staff
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The first Christmas card ever produced had its own disturbing qualities. It was designed by an English artist named John Calcott Horsley in 1843, after he was commissioned for the task by Sir Henry Cole, a businessman from Bath, England. Packages of 1,000 of the original cards, which were 3 by 5 inches in size, sold for one shilling each — an average man’s weekly wage — which meant they were only bought by the wealthy. Only 12 of the original cards still exist, and one was recently sold for £20,000.

But many found the pictures on the card disturbing. In the center is a well-dressed Victorian family, perhaps that of Sir Henry, sitting down to a Christmas feast toasting each other. But on each side of the center picture are two very different scenes. On the left is a scene of the hungry being fed, and on the right is a picture of the poor being clothed. The Puritans denounced it because the family was drinking and living in opulence, and the wealthy were put off by it because it had the poor taste to remind them of the destitute people living all around them who were in need of their aid.

Jesus described his own mission with these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). (hide)