“
At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.
”
”
Mother Teresa
“
Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him?
”
”
Mother Teresa (In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers)
“
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
”
”
Mother Teresa
“
There is always money for war. You never hear political leaders say they can't go to war because the country can't afford it. They claim not to have money for the poor, homeless and hungry, but war? It's never a problem.
”
”
David Icke
“
How could Reagan live in a White
House, which has a lot of rooms,and there be homelessness? And he's talking about helping. I don't believe that there is anyone that is going hungry in America simply by reason of denial or lack of ability to feed them. It is by people not knowing where or how to get this help. Why can't he take people off the street and put them in his White House? Then he'll have people from the streets to help him with his ideas. Not helpless! Homeless! Not helpless They haven't been homeless forever.They've done things in society.The White House would be tainted because he doesn't want to get dirty.
”
”
Tupac Shakur (Tupac: Resurrection, 1971-1996)
“
Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come find the church’, but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.
”
”
Tony Campolo
“
What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs
”
”
William Blake
“
Kill two birds with one stone, feed the homeless to the hungry.
”
”
Ray Bradbury
“
Karma yoga is giving food to the hungry, clothes to the needy, shelter to the homeless, education to the uneducated, medicine to the sick, and trees and cleanliness to the environment.
”
”
Amit Ray (Yoga The Science of Well-Being)
“
... In our family, if you said the words 'I feel,' they better be followed with 'hungry' or 'cold'. Because we didn't get personal, that's just how it was.
”
”
Liz Murray (Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard)
“
they asked the poor what it was like to be poor, the hungry what it was like to be hungry, the homeless what it was like to be homeless.
”
”
Arundhati Roy (Ministry of Utmost Happiness)
“
Let my silence grow with noise
as pregnant mothers grow with life.
Let my silence permeate these walls
as sunlight permeates a home.
Let the silence rise from unwatered graves
and craters left by bombs.
Let the silence rise from empty bellies
and surge from broken hearts.
The silence of the hidden and forgotten.
The silence of the abused and tortured.
The silence of the persecuted and imprisoned.
The silence of the hanged and massacred.
Loud as all the sounds can be,
let my silence be loud
so the hungry may eat my words
and the poor may wear my words.
Loud as all the sounds can be,
let my silence be loud
so I may resurrect the dead
and give voice to the oppressed.
My silence speaks.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
Help for the sick and hungry,
home for the homeless folk,
peace in the world forever,
this is my prayer, O Lord. Amen.
”
”
Anne Lamott (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith)
“
Getting through life without a lot of money, possessions, and/or friends is admirable, especially if it is by choice.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
While there are millions of hungry people all around the world, while there are thousands of homeless people in every country, while some continents are in a horrible poverty, while there are not enough schools, not enough hospitals in the entire world, building churches, mosques, synagogues or temples or spending money on guns, on war industry are the greatest treasons to humanity!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
Most human beings strongly believe that money is way less important than the life of a human being, but in reality five hundred, fifty, or even five dollars are way more important to the lives of most human beings than the lives of most human beings.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
If a homeless person has a funny sign, he hasn't been homeless for that long. A real homeless person is too hungry to be funny.
”
”
Chris Rock
“
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
”
”
Mother Teresa
“
I knew that to really minister to Rwanda's needs meant working toward reconciliation in the prisons, in the churches, and in the cities and villages throughout the country. It meant feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the young, but it also meant healing the wounded and forgiving the unforgivable.
I knew I had to be committed to preaching a transforming message to the people of Rwanda. Jesus did not die for people to be religious. He died so that we might believe in Him and be transformed. I'm engaged in a purpose and strategy that Jesus came to Earth for. My life is set for that divine purpose in Jesus Christ. I was called to that--proclaiming the message of transformation through Jesus Christ.
”
”
John Rucyahana (The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness Amidst a Pile of Bones)
“
The mission sat in a converted store front on the corner of a medium-busy street. There was a small crowd gathered in front - no real surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, all all you had to do was spend a few moments of your life listening to the good reverend explain why you were going to Hell. It seemed like a pretty good bargain, even to me, but I wasn't hungry.
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter in the Dark (Dexter, #3))
“
Whenever Ingrid and I got out of the suburbs, into Berkeley or San Francisco, and saw how other people lived, Ingrid would cry at the smallest of things- a little boy walking home by himself, a discarded cardboard sign saying HUNGRY PLEASE HELP. She would snap a picture, and by the time she lowered her camera, tears would already be falling. I always felt kind of guilty that I didn't feel as sad as she did, but now, watching Dylan, I think that's probably a good thing. I mean, you see a million terrible things every day, on the news and in the paper, and in real life. I'm not saying that it's stupid to feel sad, just that it would be impossible to let everything get to you and still get some sleep at night.
”
”
Nina LaCour (Hold Still)
“
You’re twelve. What else do you have to do with your time?”
“House the homeless. Feed the hungry. Cure cancer. The possibilities are endless.
”
”
Jewel E. Ann (Look the Part)
“
Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visable in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.
”
”
Joseph Bernardin
“
In its timeless capacity to embody the human condition, the vampire is a poignant metaphor describing the psychosocial experience of the pariah - the outsider. The vampire is the Other that used to be human. The diseased, the mentally challenged, the homeless and hungry, ......are all vampires in a way; the other who used to be human, the invisible who casts no reflection among us.
”
”
Katherine Ramsland (The Science of Vampires)
“
Some people ate less food less often when they each had a home than they now do as hobos.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Along the open road on winter nights, homeless, cold, and hungry, one voice gripped my frozen heart: 'Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don't know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.' In the morning my eyes were so vacant and my face so dead, that the people I met may not even have seen me.
In cities, mud went suddenly red and black, like a mirror when a lamp in the next room moves, like treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke rise to heaven; and left and right, all wealth exploded like a billion thunderbolts.
”
”
Arthur Rimbaud
“
While their beneficence ensured no one they approved of ever went hungry, sick or homeless in Lilydale, they also used their influence to control the local population, harass those who stepped out of line and create a culture of fear that had neighbors telling on neighbors.
”
”
Jess Lourey (Bloodline)
“
As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too.
”
”
Maya Schenwar (Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better)
“
Everyone. The church, the parish, politicians, people who believed in God, people who didn’t believe in God… she made it her job to defend the weakest: the homeless, migrants, even criminals. Because somewhere in the Bible Jesus says something like: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was homeless and you looked after me, I was sick and you cared for me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ And then He says something like, what we do for the weakest among us, we also do for Him. And she took everything so damn literally, my wife. That’s why she kept causing trouble.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (Anxious People)
“
That churchgoers do the lion's share of the charitable work in our communities is simply untrue. They get credit for it because they do a better job of tying the good works they do to their creed. But according to a 1998 study, 82% of volunteerism by churchgoers falls under the rubric of "church maintenance" activities -- volunteerism entirely within, and for the benefit of, the church building and immediate church community. As a result of this siphoning of volunteer energy into the care and feeding of churches themselves, most of the volunteering that happens out in the larger community -- from AIDS hospices to food shelves to international aid workers to those feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and caring for the elderly -- comes from the category of "unchurched" volunteers.
”
”
Dale McGowan (Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion)
“
Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you vote or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior.
This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.
”
”
Thomas Gilovich (The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights)
“
Bit yells, Homeless Hungry? Dude, I invented Homeless Hungry. The kid just waves.
”
”
Jess Walter (We Live in Water: Stories)
“
Every tongue has low standards during starvation.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
The law is that the hungry must be fed, and the homeless must be housed, and the sick must be healed. That is the way of the Light.” Maerad
”
”
Alison Croggon (The Gift)
“
Humanity will be better served when those in power, privileged and keepers of it's flame realize that poverty is not a crime nor a curse but a condition though at times crippling can be the catalyst that can lead many from despair to prosperity. Each time we help feed the hungry we not only help satisfy their needs but also ours. When we help shelter the homeless, we also strengthen the foundations of our souls in the process. When we show others love and compassion...it will always come back to us. In all we do to help better humanity...it is never done in vain.
”
”
Timothy Pina (Hearts for Haiti: Book of Poetry & Inspiration)
“
SHOHAKU OKUMURA: We human beings have the ability to think of things not in front of us. We create stories in our minds in which the hero or heroine is always us. We evaluate what happened in the past, we analyze our present conditions, and we anticipate what should happen in the future. This is an important ability. Because of it, we can create art, study history, and have visions of the future. Without it, we couldn’t write or enjoy poems or movies. Almost all of human culture depends on seeing things not in front of our eyes. This means almost all culture is fictitious. Our ability to create such fictions is the reality of our lives. We cannot live without it. But this ability leads to many problems. We have certain expectations of our stories. If things go as we expect, we feel like heavenly beings, but if not, we feel we’re in hell. Often we desire more and more without ever experiencing satisfaction, like hungry ghosts. It’s important to see that it’s not life that causes suffering but our expectation that life should be the way we want. We can’t live without expectation, but if we can handle the feelings caused by the difference between our expectations and reality, that’s liberation. Zazen practice as taught by Dogen Zenji, Sawaki Roshi, and Uchiyama Roshi is taking a break from watching the screen of our stories and sitting down on the ground of the reality that exists before our imagination. When we’re not taken in by our fictitious world, we can enjoy and learn from the stories we make.
”
”
Kosho Uchiyama (Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo)
“
Most of us accept that when we flip the light switch, the bulb will light up the darkness. When we turn on the tap, crystalline water will pour deliciously into our glass. When we are hungry, there will be something to eat. We also accept that others do not deserve the same. In the cities, we walk by the homeless each and every day. On the nightly news, we glorify hatred and rage. In entertainment, we celebrate the discomfort of others. We have learned to accept the unacceptable. It is a tragedy. Changing the world seems an impossible task. And not one among us can do it. Only when we each commit to small steps forward will we turn it all around.
”
”
Melissa Hellstern (How to be Lovely: The Audrey Hepburn Way of Life)
“
Anger at injustice is a hallmark of the prophets. We have the responsibility to speak the truth. If we don’t witness to the crudeness and brutality of our society, which disregards the homeless, poor, hungry, and dispossessed, who will?
”
”
Amos Smith (Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots)
“
Love your neighbor. Love the stranger. Hear the cry of the otherwise unheard. Liberate the poor from their poverty. Care for the dignity of all. Let those who have more than they need share their blessings with those who have less. Feed the hungry, house the homeless, and heal the sick in body and mind. Fight injustice, whoever it is done by and whoever it is done against. And do these things because, being human, we are bound by a covenant of human solidarity, whatever our color or culture, class or creed. These are moral principles, not economic or political ones. They have to do with conscience, not wealth or power. But without them, freedom will not survive. The free market and liberal democratic state together will not save liberty, because liberty can never be built by self-interest alone. I-based societies all eventually die. Ibn Khaldun showed this in the fourteenth century, Giambattista Vico in the eighteenth, and Bertrand Russell in the twentieth. Other-based societies survive. Morality is not an option. It’s an essential.
”
”
Jonathan Sacks (Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times)
“
As a counterbalance to the list of seven deadly sins, the church in the Middle Ages came up with a list of seven works of mercy: to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, house the homeless, visit the sick, ransom the captive, bury the dead.
”
”
Philip Yancey (The Question That Never Goes Away)
“
Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenceless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will, perform them. But of his legal duty—that is, of his duty to live honestly towards his fellow men—his fellow men not only may judge, but, for their own protection, must judge. And, if need be, they may rightfully compel him to perform it. They may do this, acting singly, or in concert. They may do it on the instant, as the necessity arises, or deliberately and systematically, if they prefer to do so, and the exigency will admit of it.
”
”
Lysander Spooner (The Lysander Spooner Reader (LFB))
“
At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.
”
”
Blago Kirov (Mother Teresa: Quotes & Facts)
“
To hope for a better future in this world—for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful, and wounded world—is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought.
”
”
N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
“
I'll tell you, I now know why Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd. It was because he had such a deep and beautiful feeling of love for people like you, and among all the people he knew in Palestine, they were the ones he loved and worried about the most. And he made treatment of you and those like you the basis for how he will judge people when they die. He will say to people who are kind to you, 'Come, blessed of my Father, into the kingdom of heaven, because when I was homeless and hungry and naked and ill and in prison, you cared for me. As long as you did this for the least among you, you did it to me. So come into my Father's home, and those who are not kind to you, God will give them a hard time, a very hard time.
”
”
Joseph F. Girzone (The Homeless Bishop)
“
So the Talmud says it was an evil place. It was a crime in Sodom to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Beggars were given marked coins that no shop would accept. Welp. In the USA right now there are places where it’s a crime to help homeless people. Plenty of stores don’t accept food stamps. So are we in it? Do we have enough sense to get ourselves out if we are?
”
”
Naomi Alderman (The Future)
“
We saw so many sad and helpless people. I remember looking at people on the TeeVee from other countries who was all drenched and scared and hungry and even though Mammaloose and I don't have lots of money I never felt like those people and never thought we would look like those people. Now we were the same. We are all the same, I guess, once we are homeless, once what we know is gone.
”
”
Kim Antieau (Ruby's Imagine)
“
And His Word can come through the trees like wind. “I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me . . . I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”3
”
”
Ann Voskamp (The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life)
“
Violence is as much a part of what is means to be poor as being hungry, sick, homeless, or jobless. In fact, as we shall see, violence is frequently the problem that poor people are most concerned about. It is one of the core reasons they are poor in the first place, and one of the primary reasons they stay poor. Indeed, we will simply never be able to win the battle against extreme poverty unless we address it.
”
”
Gary A. Haugen (The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence)
“
A free Republic! How a myth will maintain itself, how it will continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the comparatively intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free Republic! And yet within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites have successfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon the fundamental principles, laid down by the fathers of this country, guaranteeing to every man, woman, and child “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” For thirty years they have been increasing their wealth and power at the expense of the vast mass of workers, thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless, and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the country from east to west, from north to south, in a vain search for work. For many years the home has been left to the care of the little ones, while the parents are exhausting their life and strength for a mere pittance. For thirty years the sturdy sons of America have been sacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war, and the daughters outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For long and weary years this process of undermining the nation’s health, vigor, and pride, without much protest from the disinherited and oppressed, has been going on. Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of this “free land of ours” became more and more audacious in their heartless, cruel efforts to compete with the rotten and decayed European tyrannies for supremacy of power.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)
“
America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!
”
”
Carlos Bulosan (America Is in the Heart (Penguin Classics))
“
A brick could be used to show you how to live a richer, fuller, more satisfying life. Don’t you want to have fulfillment and meaning saturating your existence? I can show you how you can achieve this and so much more with just a simple brick. For just $99.99—not even an even hundred bucks, I’ll send you my exclusive life philosophy that’s built around a brick. Man’s used bricks to build houses for centuries. Now let one man, me, show you how a brick can be used to build your life up bigger and stronger than you ever imagined. But act now, because supplies are limited. This amazing offer won’t last forever. You don’t want to wake up in ten years to find yourself divorced, homeless, and missing your testicles because you waited even two hours too long to obtain this information. Become a hero today—save your life. Procrastination is only for the painful things in life. We prolong the boring, but why put off for tomorrow the exciting life you could be living today? If you’re not satisfied with the information I’m providing, I’m willing to offer you a no money back guarantee. That’s right, you read that wrong. If you are not 100% dissatisfied with my product, I’ll give you your money back. For $99.99 I’m offering 99.99%, but you’ve got to be willing to penny up that percentage to 100. Why delay? The life you really want is mine, and I’m willing to give it to you—for a price. That price is a one-time fee of $99.99, which of course everyone can afford—even if they can’t afford it. Homeless people can’t afford it, but they’re the people who need my product the most. Buy my product, or face the fact that in all probability you are going to end up homeless and sexless and unloved and filthy and stinky and probably even disabled, if not physically than certainly mentally. I don’t care if your testicles taste like peanut butter—if you don’t buy my product, even a dog won’t lick your balls you miserable cur. I curse you! God damn it, what are you, slow? Pay me my money so I can show you the path to true wealth. Don’t you want to be rich? Everything takes money—your marriage, your mortgage, and even prostitutes. I can show you the path to prostitution—and it starts by ignoring my pleas to help you. I’m not the bad guy here. I just want to help. You have some serious trust issues, my friend. I have the chance to earn your trust, and all it’s going to cost you is a measly $99.99. Would it help you to trust me if I told you that I trust you? Well, I do. Sure, I trust you. I trust you to make the smart decision for your life and order my product today. Don’t sleep on this decision, because you’ll only wake up in eight hours to find yourself living in a miserable future. And the future indeed looks bleak, my friend. War, famine, children forced to pimp out their parents just to feed the dog. Is this the kind of tomorrow you’d like to live in today? I can show you how to provide enough dog food to feed your grandpa for decades. In the future I’m offering you, your wife isn’t a whore that you sell for a knife swipe of peanut butter because you’re so hungry you actually considered eating your children. Become a hero—and save your kids’ lives. Your wife doesn’t want to spread her legs for strangers. Or maybe she does, and that was a bad example. Still, the principle stands. But you won’t be standing—in the future. Remember, you’ll be confined to a wheelchair. Mushrooms are for pizzas, not clouds, but without me, your life will atom bomb into oblivion. Nobody’s dropping a bomb while I’m around. The only thing I’m dropping is the price. Boom! I just lowered the price for you, just to show you that you are a valued customer. As a VIP, your new price on my product is just $99.96. That’s a savings of over two pennies (three, to be precise). And I’ll even throw in a jar of peanut butter for free. That’s a value of over $.99. But wait, there’s more! If you call within the next ten minutes, I’ll even throw in a blanket free of charge. . .
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Brick)
“
The course of history has been dramatically impacted because some simple Christ-followers were simply not sophisticated enough to rationalize into oblivion teachings like this as some obscure metaphor with little instructive value to the contemporary local church. Instead, orphanages opened, schools started, homeless were sheltered, prisoners were discipled, the hungry were fed, the sick were treated, slavery was abolished, and human beings all over the world were loved because Kingdom expanding Christ-followers throughout history believed that Jesus meant business.
”
”
Jeff Christopherson (The Kingdom Matrix: Designing a Church for the Kingdom of God)
“
Fiercely competitive TV channels covered the story of the breaking city as “Breaking News.” Nobody pointed out the irony. They unleashed their untrained, but excellent-looking, young reporters, who spread across the city like a rash, asking urgent, empty questions; they asked the poor what it was like to be poor, the hungry what it was like to be hungry, the homeless what it was like to be homeless. “Bhai Sahib, yeh bataaiye, aap ko kaisa lag raha hai…?” Tell me, brother, how does it feel to be…? The TV channels never ran out of sponsorship for their live telecasts of despair. They never ran out of despair.
”
”
Arundhati Roy (The Ministry of Utmost Happiness)
“
Is not this the fast that I choose: j to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps k of the yoke, to let the oppressed [2] go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not l to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, m and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 n Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, o and your healing shall spring up speedily; p your righteousness shall go before you; q the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
”
”
Anonymous (Holy Bible: English Standard Version (ESV))
“
How many cities of forty thousand, which is the population of Burlington, have a foreign policy? Well, we did. During my tenure as mayor we made the point that excessive spending on the military and unnecessary wars meant fewer resources to address the needs of ordinary people. Somewhere in the Reagan Library, or wherever these things are kept, there is a letter from the mayor of Burlington opposing the U.S. funding of contras in Nicaragua. The letter stated, “Stop the war against the people of Nicaragua. Use our tax dollars to feed the hungry and house the homeless. Stop killing the innocent people of Nicaragua.” As
”
”
Bernie Sanders (Our Revolution)
“
participation in the political process or lack thereof—and the principles we employ—greatly affect our neighbors. Politics can be a matter of freedom or imprisonment, free speech or censorship, housing or homelessness, life or death. Politics is an essential aspect of modern life. It is how we govern ourselves, and it plays a major role in how we organize ourselves as a society. Political actions have started wars and defined certain people as property, but they’ve also fed the hungry and provided care for the sick. Christians must be faithful and thoughtful in how we choose to wield our influence and political power.
”
”
Justin Giboney (Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement)
“
Someone once asked Gandhi for a sermon, and his reply was, “My life is my sermon.” In the same way, we see how Jesus chose to live his adult life as perhaps one of his most potent sermons of all. While our contemporary Christian culture places value on the unholy trinity of buildings, bodies, and bucks, Jesus—the wisest teacher who ever lived and central figure in human history—was a homeless man who instead lived his life investing in authentic community with twelve close friends. We see them wrestle with the radical nature of his message together, share meals together, serve the poor and hungry together, and share life’s burdens with one another.
”
”
Benjamin L. Corey (Undiluted: Rediscovering the Radical Message of Jesus)
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him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD? 6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: j to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps k of the yoke, to let the oppressed [2] go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not l to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, m and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 n Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, o and your healing shall spring up speedily; p your righteousness shall go before you; q the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then
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Anonymous (Holy Bible: English Standard Version (ESV))
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I like how Dallas Willard put it: “We don’t believe something by merely saying we believe it,” he said, “or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.” So perhaps a better question than “Do I believe in miracles?” is “Am I acting like I do?” Am I including the people who are typically excluded? Am I feeding the hungry and caring for the sick? Am I holding the hands of the homeless and offering help to addicts? Am I working to break down religious and political barriers that marginalize ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities and people with disabilities? Am I behaving as though life is more than a meaningless, chaotic mess, that there is some order in the storm?
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Rachel Held Evans (Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again)
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What if the energy and resources used to preserve and tweak the civil religion was rather spent feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, befriending the drug addict, and visiting the prisoner? What if our focus was on sacrificing our resources to help inner-city schools and safety houses for battered women? What if our concern was to bridge the ungodly racial gap in our country by developing friendships and collaborating in endeavors with people whose ethnicity is different than our own? What if instead of trying to defend our religious rights, Christians concerned themselves with siding with others whose rights are routinely trampled? What if instead of trying to legally make life more difficult for gays, we worried only about how we could affirm their unsurpassable worth in service to them?
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Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
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the following prayer by Dr. Jane Goodall, who was named a UN Messenger of Peace for her continued world efforts, she seems to touch on most aspects of world conflict as we know them today and as they pertain to all living things. Prayer for World Peace We pray to the great Spiritual Power in which we live and move and have our being. We pray that we may at all times keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma; that we may grow in our understanding of the nature of all living beings and our connectedness with the natural world; that we may become ever more filled with generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life; that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature and control our greed for material things, knowing that our actions are harming our natural world and the future of our children; that we may value each and every human being for who he is, for who she is, reaching to the spirit that is within,knowing the power of each individual to change the world. We pray for social justice, for the alleviation of the crippling poverty that condemns millions of people around the world to lives of misery—hungry, sick, and utterly without hope. We pray for the children who are starving,who are condemned to homelessness, slave labor, and prostitution, and especially for those forced to fight, to kill and torture even members of their own family. We pray for the victims of violence and war, for those wounded in body and for those wounded in mind. We pray for the multitudes of refugees, forced from their homes to alien places through war or through the utter destruction of their environment. We pray for suffering animals everywhere, for an end to the pain caused by scientific experimentation, intensive farming, fur farming, shooting, trapping, training for entertainment, abusive pet owners, and all other forms of exploitation such as overloading and overworking pack animals, bull fighting, badger baiting, dog and cock fighting and so many more. We pray for an end to cruelty, whether to humans or other animals, for an end to bullying, and torture in all its forms. We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving and the strength we gain in loving; that we may learn to take nothing for granted in this life; that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts; that we may learn to rejoice in our being. We pray for these things with humility; We pray because of the hope that is within us, and because of a faith in the ultimate triumph of the human spirit; We pray because of our love for Creation, and because of our trust in God. We pray, above all, for peace throughout the world. I love this beautiful and magnanimous prayer. Each request is spelled out clearly and specifically, and it asks that love, peace, and kindness be shown to all of earth’s creatures, not just its human occupants.
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Joe Vitale (The Secret Prayer: The Three-Step Formula for Attracting Miracles)
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How do I know what God’s will is for my life? I grew up asking this question and feeling a great deal of pressure when it came to decisions like whether I should get married, which college to go to, what career to choose. Now, rather than asking what God’s will is for my life, I find it helpful instead to ask what God’s will is and how my life might fit into that. Maybe that’s what it means to seek first the kingdom of God—the world does not revolve around us, but rather we are revolving around God. That relieves the pressure a bit because we know that God’s will is for the hungry to have food, the homeless to have housing, the oppressed to be set free, and we get to be a part of that. The question then becomes how we can contribute to the redemptive work God is doing. Instead of asking God to bless what we’re doing, we can align ourselves with what God has already promised to bless—the poor, the merciful, the peacemakers—and know with confidence that God is blessing us, or more important, that we are blessing God.
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Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution, Updated and Expanded: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
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In a few weeks almost everyone’s gonna forget about the Beirut bombing, like we forgot about the ever-incoming nuke, like we forgot about the President campaigning on student loan forgiveness, like we forgot about the actor who said not enough Jews died in the Holocaust and that he hoped his wife got gang raped, like how each new President makes the other Presidents look kinder and gentler, like we forget about war crimes, like we forget about the secret police, like we forget about the homeless when we can’t see them, like we forget what it’s like to be poor to be hungry the minute we have food we have money, like we forgot about Three Mile Island, like we forgot that fall and spring used to be as long as winter and summer like we forgot we could do something about this, like we forget about anything we don’t turn into a holiday and remember only the signs and symbols of the horror, like we forget each time we remember that it’s not that we forget, it’s that there are just too many tragedies, every week, forever and ever, and to remember them all would kill you. Your heart would break and stop beating and you'd die. So we forget.
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Sasha Fletcher (Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World)
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He was tired of gossip. God, was he tired of gossip. By the time he sold it, SpeakEasyMedia had fully morphed into the very thing Leo most loathed. It had become a pathetic parody of itself, not any more admirable or honest or transparent than the many publications and people they ruthlessly ridiculed—twenty-two to thirty-four times a day to be exact, that was the number the accountants had come up with, how many daily posts they needed on each of their fourteen sites to generate enough clickthroughs to keep the advertisers happy. An absurd amount, a number that meant they had to give prominence to the mundane, shine a spotlight of mockery on the unlucky and often undeserving—publishing stories that were immediately forgotten except by the poor sods who’d been fed to the ever-hungry machine that was SpeakEasyMedia. “The cockroaches of the Internet,” one national magazine had dubbed them, illustrating the article with a cartoon drawing of Leo as King Roach. He was tired of being King Roach. The numbers the larger media company dangled seemed huge to Leo who was also, at that particular moment, besotted with his new publicist, Victoria Gross, who had come from money and was accustomed to money and looked around the room of Leo’s tiny apartment the first time she visited as if she’d just stepped into a homeless shelter. (“When you said you lived near Gramercy,” she said, confused, “I thought you’d
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Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney (The Nest)
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In his sermons, as in the book he published in 2005, The Myth of a Christian Nation, Boyd challenged the idea that America had been, or ever could be, a “Christian nation.” Taking his text from the Gospels, he reminded evangelicals that Christ’s kingdom was “not of this world,” and worldly kingdoms were the domain of fallen man. Evangelicals, he wrote, speak of “taking America back to God,” but the Constitution said nothing about a Christian nation, and America never remotely looked like the domain of God, certainly not in the days of slavery or of Jim Crow, and not today. A nation may have noble ideals and be committed to just principles, but of necessity it wields the “power over” of the sword, as opposed to the “power under” of the cross—which is that of Jesus’ self-sacrificial love. To identify the Kingdom of God with that of any version of the kingdom of the world is, he wrote, to engage in idolatry. The myth of a Christian nation, he continued, has led to the misconception that the American civil religion is real Christianity. Evangelicals, he wrote, spend our time striving to keep prayer in the public schools, “In God we trust” on our coins, and the Ten Commandments in public places. Might it not be, he asked, that the effort to defend prayer before civic functions reinforces the notion that prayer is a perfunctory social activity? And what if we spent all that energy serving each other with Christ-like love? We could, he wrote, feed the hungry, house the homeless, bridge the “ungodly racial gap,” and side with others whose rights are routinely trampled.
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Frances FitzGerald (The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America)
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In the words of Barbara Rossing and John Yoder, borrowing an image from the book of Revelation, the contrast between the “power over” kingdom of the world and the “power under” kingdom of God is “Lion power” versus “Lamb power.” The kingdom of God advances by people lovingly placing themselves under others, in service to others, at cost to themselves. This “coming under” doesn’t mean that followers of Jesus conform to other people’s wishes, but it does mean that we always interact with others with their best interests in mind.
Following the example of Christ, and in stark contrast to the modus operandi of the world, we are to do “nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than [our]selves.” We are to “look not to [our] own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3–4). We are to “not seek [our] own advantage, but that of the other” (1 Cor. 10:24, cf. 10:33). Following Jesus’ example, we are to find honor in washing people’s feet (John 13:14–15)—that is, in serving them in any way we can.
So too, in following our Master we are to seek to do good and free all who are “oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38) while we voluntarily bear others’ burdens (Gal. 6:2). We are to “outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10) and never be competitive with others (unless, of course, it’s for fun) (Gal. 5:26). We are to “put up with the failings of the weak, and not please ourselves,” always asking how we might “please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor” (Rom. 15:1–2). We are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take in the homeless, befriend the friendless, and visit the condemned prisoner (James 2:15–17; 1 John 3:14–18; cf. Matt. 25:34–40).
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Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
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I had a strange dream. I was carrying a bookbag on my back, and it had a lot of tools in it. However, for some reason, I couldn’t take off the backpack. In the dream, I had to continue to start over from where I started. I was so tired and frustrated. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. All I knew was that I was walking in the desert with a backpack on. Again, the dream kept repeating itself. I didn’t want to keep starting over because it was hard. However, every single time the dream started over, it was more challenging because I was hungry and thirsty. I saw a tree in the desert, but I couldn’t get any water. It started to snow, but I didn’t have shelter. I was cold, and I didn’t know how to get warm. I looked around, and there wasn’t anyone in sight. I realized that I had to walk down the path that was my own. I never had anyone to hold my hand. However, some people want people to walk in front of them, beside them, beneath, or above them. I was tired of walking the never-ending path of heavy burdens. However, my path of burdens wasn’t by choice. I was given this path, but in my dream, I had to change the direction.
I was giving permission to take off my backpack. I needed water, and I noticed I had a cup in my backpack. I also had a spile (spout) that I could use to get water out of a tree. It was getting colder and colder. I needed shelter. I looked in my bag, and there were tools to make a tent. I put my tent together after I gathered some water. I dug in my bag, and I saw some sticks. I built a fire to warm up. My dream was very interesting. It brought clarity into my life. I had all of the tools I needed to start over. However, I had to make the choice to use them. I had to put my mom’s choices behind me because I cannot change what happened.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
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From the story he told me, I pictured him among those bands of vagrants that in the years that followed I saw more and more often roaming about Europe: false monks, charlatans, swindlers, cheats, tramps and tatterdemalions, lepers and cripples, jugglers, invalid mercenaries, wandering Jews escaped from the infidels with their spirit broken, lunatics, fugitives under banishment, malefactors with an ear cut off, sodomites, and along with them ambulant artisans, weavers, tinkers, chair-menders, knife-grinders, basket-weavers, masons, and also rogues of every stripe, forgers, scoundrels, cardsharps, rascals, bullies, reprobates, recreants, frauds, hooligans, simoniacal and embezzling canons and priests, people who lived on the credulity of others, counterfeiters of bulls and papal seals, peddlers of indulgences, false paralytics who lay at church doors, vagrants fleeing from convents, relic-sellers, pardoners, soothsayers and fortunetellers, necromancers, healers, bogus alms-seekers, fornicators of every sort, corruptors of nuns and maidens by deception and violence, simulators of dropsy, epilepsy, hemorrhoids, gout, and sores, as well as melancholy madness. There were those who put plasters on their bodies to imitate incurable ulcerations, others who filled their mouths with a blood-colored substance to feign accesses of consumption, rascals who pretended to be weak in one of their limbs, carrying unnecessary crutches and imitating the falling sickness, scabies, buboes, swellings, while applying bandages, tincture of saffron, carrying irons on their hands, their heads swathed, slipping into the churches stinking, and suddenly fainting in the squares, spitting saliva and popping their eyes, making the nostrils spurt blood concocted of blackberry juice and vermilion, to wrest food or money from the frightened people who recalled the church fathers’ exhortations to give alms: Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless to your hearth, we visit Christ, we house Christ, we clothe Christ, because as water purges fire so charity purges our sins.
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Umberto Eco (The Name Of The Rose)
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For the twenty million Americans who are hungry tonight, for the homeless freezing tonight, literature is as useless as a knowledge of astronomy
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Andre Dubus (Broken Vessels: Essays)
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All these frickin’ rich people with all this money who just want to blow it on coke and hookers. And then a whole bunch of homeless people, sleeping on all the corners, cold, hungry, smelling like urine. And then a whole bunch of prostitutes, trying to make cash. And then we all get to know each other.
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Robert P. Kolker (Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery)
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And others I knew were hungry for the hope of the Easter message: a family raising other people’s children; a widower learning to find a new way in a life alone; people in financial crisis, unemployment, and homelessness; folks in broken relationships. Here we were, all together, waiting to hear the Easter message that Jesus’s death and Resurrection promises eternal life with Him in heaven, where there will be no more pain or stress or loneliness or death.
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Guideposts (Daily Guideposts 2018: A Spirit-Lifting Devotional)
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From the story he told me, I pictured him among those bands of vagrants that in the years that followed I saw more and more often roaming about Europe: false monks, charlatans, swindlers, cheats, tramps and tatterdemalions, lepers and cripples, jugglers, invalid mercenaries, wandering Jews escaped from the infidels with their spirit broken, lunatics, fugitives under banishment, malefactors with an ear cut off, sodomites, and along with them ambulant artisans, weavers, tinkers, chair-menders, knife-grinders, basket-weavers, masons, and also rogues of every stripe, forgers, scoundrels, cardsharps, rascals, bullies, reprobates, recreants, frauds, hooligans, simoniacal and embezzling canons and priests, people who lived on the credulity of others, counterfeiters of bulls and papal seals, peddlers of indulgences, false paralytics who lay at church doors, vagrants fleeing from convents, relic-sellers, soothsayers and fortunetellers, necromancers, healers, bogus alms-seekers, fornicators of every sort, corruptors of nuns and maidens by deception and violence, simulators of dropsy, epilepsy, hemorrhoids, gout, and sores, as well as melancholy madness. There were those who put plasters on their bodies to imitate incurable ulcerations, others who filled their mouths with a blood-colored substance to feign accesses of consumption, rascals who pretended to be weak in one of their limbs, carrying unnecessary crutches and imitating the falling sickness, scabies, buboes, swellings, while applying bandages, tincture of saffron, carrying irons on their hands, their heads swathed, slipping into the churches stinking, and suddenly fainting in the squares, spitting saliva and popping their eyes, making the nostrils spurt blood concocted of blackberry juice and vermilion, to wrest food or money from the frightened people who recalled the church fathers’ exhortations to give alms: Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless to your hearth, we visit Christ, we house Christ, we clothe Christ, because as water purges fire so charity purges our sins.
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Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose)
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Credibility comes from obeying Jesus’ teaching to shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, love the rejected, touch the untouchable, fight for the abused, and take care of the widow and orphan. When the church begins to share God’s grace in those tangible ways, credibility will come back to the church. This is my life mission and my life goal.
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Ken Burkey (The Power of an Orange Chair: Anecdotes, Stories & Celebrations of an Isaiah 58 Church)
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Throwing food away is all too often a roundabout way of throwing food to a poor person.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Theft became an issue in the hurricane Ian aftermath.
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Steven Magee
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The problem is, in a world of humans the humans focus on everything else but humanity. If we wipe out humanity from our fancy equations, then we only wipe out ourselves. With such acts of fallacy how can we expect there to be any advancement in the world whatsoever?
Even our very notion of advancement is all messed up. Our notion of advancement prioritizes colonizing Mars over feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. If this is advancement, then the pioneers of such advancement are nothing but cancer on the face of earth.
And just like you don't collaborate with Adolf Hitler, you don't collaborate with such pioneers, that is, with toxic billionaires. If you do, then you are no better than those rich and reckless kids of emerald mine owners.
So I say again, the fate of this world lies in the hands of the civilians - everyday, ordinary civilians. When the civilians are responsible, the world is well - when the civilians are sapient, the world is swell.
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Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
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What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way.
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Anonymous (The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language)
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Have a Profession, Not a Job Everyone except trust fund babies and perennial welfare recipients need to work. It is an unavoidable fact of life that if you don't want to be homeless, go hungry, constantly beg, or wish to have any semblance of a normal, healthy financial life you need to work. But in the fact work traditionally consumes half of your waking life (more if you include commute), if your job has a point and purpose to it, then so too does your life. This isn't to say there is anything wrong with being a general laborer, a barista, or a fast food worker. We all start somewhere and these low-skilled, entry level jobs are a vital part of the economy and a starting point in everyone's working career. But if you take the time to learn a skill, develop a trade, or earn an employable degree, you can have a profession, not merely a job. This confers upon you and your life immediate purpose and value as now you get to declare yourself as an individual with a specific skill. “I'm a plumber.” “I'm a CPA.” “I'm a cop.” Or “I'm a programmer.” And this statement declares how you contribute to the economy, how you earn your keep in this society, and is usually the first thing people ask about you – what do you do? Furthermore, as it just so happens, being a professional pays more. Admittedly, it takes some training and education, and for some particularly prestigious professions it can take years (for example, being a surgeon). But if you go that extra mile and invest in yourself a year or eight to develop a skill or a trade, the remaining 50-60 years of your life will not only be more profitable, but will give you purpose and meaning for your entire working career.
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Aaron Clarey (The Menu: Life Without the Opposite Sex)
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Be hospitable to anyone who comes to you, Give water' to the thirsty, bread to the hungry, Clothing to the naked and shelter to the homeless and God will bless you.
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M.L. Ahuja (Eminent Indians: Saints and Sages)
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Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises.
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Shane Claiborne
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God is present in the hungry, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned, as Jesus claimed in Matthew 25, and we serve God when we serve them.
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Philip Yancey (Grace Notes: Daily Readings with Philip Yancey)
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If God's kingdom looks radical, it is only an indictment on the sort of Christianity we have settled for. Sharing our food with the hungry, opening our homes to the homeless, reconciling with our enemies--these are what Christianity has always been.
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Shane Claiborne (Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals)
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So every dollar spent on finding some gene or hormone to explain why becoming fat is not because of sugary drinks, fried foods or unchecked gluttony is a dollar not spent on getting food for the hungry, vaccines for babies, shelter for the homeless. But the rules are made by the ones in power, these neo-Brahmins, and we must follow them if we want to survive in this global village.
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Anirban Bose (The Death of Mitali Dotto)
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Change comes, when every person is adequately benefited.
We keep hearing about “change.” Change will never come to all of society. Change can only come when the market system adequately provide all of the needs for all people. Millions are living in poverty in the United States and throughout the world, due to “change” passed them by, are struggling: Among them are high unemployment, the mentally challenged, poor education, many of them are homeless and hungry, sick and tired; such individuals, look for ways to move beyond their prison walls that hold them back from moving forward: Through the corridors of their prison, they observe the wealthy getting wealthier. They see the market system passing them at a fast rate of speed. Hope has long left the majority of them. There is a price that must be paid for the sins of those who have built these prisons.
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Ellen J. Barrier
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Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you both or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior.
This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil—an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise.
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Thomas Gilovich (The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights)
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Tony Campolo, back at Eastern College: “Jesus never says to the poor, ‘Come find the church,’ but he says to those of us in the church, ‘Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,’ Jesus in his disguises.
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Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution, Updated and Expanded: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
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It seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment. —1 Cor. 5:9–13
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Shane Claiborne (Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It's Killing Us)
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Josephus further wrote that ‘the Essenes were the most honest people in the world, very industrious and enterprising and showed great skill and concern for agriculture. They indulged in humanitarian acts like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, comforting the sick, and protecting and aiding the widows and orphans. The Brotherhood had houses in several towns where members could take abode while travelling and were taken care of.
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Joshua Benjamin (The Mystery of Israel's Ten Lost Tribes and the Legend of Jesus in India)
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[4.7-11] Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!
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Eugene H. Peterson (The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In contemporary Language)
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Challenge number seven actually precedes the Great Commission in the Bible. Peter Kuzmic from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary often says it this way: "We need to preach out of Matthew, not just the Great Commission out of Matthew 28 but the Great Compassion out of Matthew 25."
Kuzmic's point is this: when Jesus says "teaching them to obey everything," he is including his teaching from Matthew 25. In the story of the judgment of all nations (Mt 25:31-46), Jesus tells us that the way we treat the poor, the marginalized, the hungry, the naked, the prisoner and the homeless is the way that we treat him.
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Paul Borthwick (Western Christians in Global Mission: What's the Role of the North American Church?)
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It cannot be denied that as institutions, churches do good work. They operate schools and hospitals. Their charity outreaches, which take care of the homeless, sick, and hungry, have real impacts on communities. And while there are certainly hellfire-and-brimstone preachers around, there is counterweight in Presbyterian and Methodist ministers, who are grounded in a modicum of rationality, using Biblical stories as fables to teach psychological and ethical principles.
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Gudjon Bergmann (More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality)
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Some folk need a few good homeless, hungry, sleepless nights to make the voice of God real clear. Other folk need a soft bed and a warm meal before they can hear Him. He knows, and He has to let me know, too.
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Michelle Stimpson (I Met Him in the Ladies' Room)
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No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. 7 Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
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Anonymous (Holy Bible Text Edition NLT: New Living Translation)
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My humanitarian nature evolved from being with my family. Mom, dad, are my biggest heroes, the greatest inspirstion, role models, who set an example for giving back. My mom is a health practitioner, and dad is an iconic Equatorian political figure, who fought for justice, advocating for the interest of South Sudanese people, and he is one of the key founding fathers of the Acholi land. Both have done many public services including politically, treating the sick, feeding the hungry, financing the needy, raising the orphans, and sheltering the homeless in North and South Sudan. I admire their sense of changing the world, and trying to make it a better environment".
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Achola Aremo
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The Scriptures describe the early Jesus movement like this: “We go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless…We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world” (1 Cor. 4:11 – 13). Our context is quite different. We live among the wealthiest people of the world (top 2 percent), a tough mission field. We are preaching a gospel that declares that it’s easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom. But look on the bright side. After we preach the crowds down, we will not need such expensive buildings. And of course, in a Christian culture shopping for the cheapest grace, the temptation is always to tone things down a little bit. People will be more comfortable around a domesticated Jesus than the Lion of Judah.
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Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)
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To hope for a better future in this world—for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful, and wounded world—is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought. And to work for that intermediate hope, the surprising hope that comes forward from God’s ultimate future into God’s urgent present, is not a distraction from the task of mission and evangelism in the present. It is a central, essential, vital, and life-giving part of it. Mostly, Jesus himself got a hearing from his contemporaries because of what he was doing. They saw him saving people from sickness and death, and they heard him talking about a salvation, the message for which they had longed, that would go beyond the immediate into the ultimate future. But the two were not unrelated, the present one a mere visual aid of the future one or a trick to gain people’s attention. The whole point of what Jesus was up to was that he was doing, close up, in the present, what he was promising long-term, in the future. And what he was promising for that future, and doing in that present, was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose—and so they could thus become colleagues and partners in that larger project. When
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N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
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Jesus had studied the speech and gestures and expressions of his Father. He had watched him move toward the hungry, the captive, the naked, the homeless. He had paid attention when his Father reached out toward the poor, the prisoner and the brokenhearted. Because the heart of his Father clearly dwelled among these, Jesus moved toward them. His eyes rested upon them. His feet crossed roads to be with them. His hands touched and healed and fed them. Jesus' body literally tracked, followed and embraced the ones who dwelled in the center of his Father's heart.
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Margot Starbuck (Small Things with Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor)
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A homeless guy asked if I had any money the other day. I told him I didn’t, I never carry cash, but I would buy him lunch. I assumed, because it’s lunchtime, you’ve got to be hungry. Homeless people get up early, you know… They don’t have blinds…” he paused, waited for us to laugh. We didn’t. He continued, “And he hesitated to answer like he had better things to spend my money on. This guy was high. He agreed to lunch, and he knew exactly what he wanted. He got the food. I said, ‘God Bless you, man, let me know if you need anything else.’ And it’s noon. I’ve been yelled at for four hours now by some asshole on the thirtieth floor. And this guy here, this homeless guy, this adult male, is high. He is doing the Harlem Shake, laughing and smiling, getting his lunch paid for. And right then, I hate this guy. He’s high as hell on a Monday afternoon living well, and I hate him. And then he sends back his burrito because it wasn’t made exactly how he wanted it.
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Max Andrew Dubinsky (An Anthology of Madness)
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The primary emphasis of the text, however, is on doing the will of God. In the context of Mark’s Gospel, this means joining in the actions that herald God’s reign (1:14–15). Whenever the church is participating in God’s mission—housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, setting free the oppressed, working for peace—it is “being family.
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Cynthia A. Jarvis (Feasting on the Gospels--Mark: A Feasting on the Word Commentary)
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When you come to them with food, they may have just eaten. Most of the homeless eat only one meal a day. It takes too much out of them to travel from one church to another for three meals a day...if three meals can be available in one day. Try to keep track of which church feeds when. The Salvation Army, Rescue Missions, and other organizations and churches that cater to the homeless may offer meals. Most of the time, Wednesday and Sunday will most likely be hungry days because no one else may feed the homeless on those days. That’s where you come
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Jean-Luc (The Spark In The Street: Revival Through Ministering to the Homeless and the Poor)