June 5 email from Bill:
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Good afternoon John OMI
I am early with the blog, this must mean I finished the reports, oh yeah!!!! Things are going along well with the brick making for Amaka ga
Spiritus. I have some more exciting news to share with you. I have been able to purchase a secondhand sewing machine for a lady named Edisa who is raising 3 children in extreme poverty and lost her husband in
Masaka, Uganda. She can start a tailoring business to help support her family. I am committing to helping one woman each month.
John, I am not writing this to feel personal gratification, but in an attempt to tell our readers and viewers that this is making a difference. This is becoming personal about poverty. A family can have a chance for a better future, and what did it cost- the equivalent of 2 footy tickets or a couple
of bottles of wine or a carton of beer. It is so easy to make a difference, we just have to want to.
I hope many people become inspired by Jesus, Mother Teresa and even possibly me. Keep you informed of
progress. Blessings
Bill Mulcahy
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How
can poverty ever be brought to an end when there are so many faces of it:
hunger, malnutrition, loneliness, homeless, imprisoned, ill, unequipped,
uneducated, addicted, enslaved. How?: as the wonderful Albanian, Mother Teresa
said, “If we all learned to share.”
So can all these faces of poverty be brought to an end by sharing? It can, but
we have to make it personal, we have
to build relationships, we have to want
to make an impact, we have to have a burden of knowing
it and to affirm it.
Jesus
had a message for us about poverty. He said,
“the poor will always be with you” (Matthew 26:11). Do we read this
literally and think that if that is the case, then why bother trying to do
anything. But, just like the intended messages that Jesus gave us via numerous
parables, we have to dig a little deeper to understand the message. If Jesus has
told us that the poor will always be with us then it must be for a particular
reason. Maybe Jesus through these few words is telling us to ‘reach out to
others’ and demonstrate God’s love for all. We are the eyes, hands, feet and
heart of God here on earth.
Reaching out to others means building a relationship
with them. This is not always easy, if fact it is the hard option. It is so easy
to comfortably remove ourselves from poverty images, to look the other way
instead of into the eyes of a homeless person seeking a couple dollars for a
feed, by simply passing judgement on a junkie without knowing their
circumstances, we do this to keep the poor in their place, down the bottom of
the social order. This is an attitude that needs a changing. I wonder how Jesus
handled these situations? Jesus formed a relationship; he didn’t worry about
the social order, He challenged it. John
4 tells us a story
of the Samaritan woman at the well and affirmed her dignity as a worthy person.
Jesus built a relationship with her. Matthew
9:20 tells us of
another time when Jesus affirmed a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years
and who had been shunned by everyone as unworthy. Jesus builds a relationship
with her in front of others. Imagine the feeling this outcast woman must have
felt to at least be acknowledged let alone being helped when Jesus ‘reached
out’ to her. Other examples include events from Luke
18 including the
blind beggar and the little children. I acknowledge that these events occurred
in a society of a strict social order but I hope you understand what I am trying
to say about making relationships and poverty personal.
Jesus got to know these people - the women, the
beggar and the children. And so we must get to know those in poverty. Make it personal! Let us all make poverty personal. This will make us
uncomfortable. Simply giving over a cheque to a charity as per the social norm
and continue to stay comfortably removed from the situation is not personal;
this is keeping the poor in their place, at arm’s length.
This
is why Mother Teresa is a wonderful role model. She built relationships
with the poor, made it personal and made a difference - a real difference.
Jesus
continued saying: “When you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to
me.”
