Ye Have The Poor With You Always

¹“For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.” (Mark 14:7). We tend to see poverty as a flaw in the system. If we could just come up with the perfect, flawless system, then there would be no poor among us. But Christ told us that the poor will be with us always. I think that if we were clever and generous enough, we might be able to ensure that none of us was ever economically poor again. But there are lots of ways that we can have plenty of money and yet still be poor, whether it be poor in relationships, or poor intellectually or emotionally, or in poor health. In fact, being poor in Spirit is what unlocks the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:3), and all of the other blessings that Christ mentions in His Sermon on the Mount. Having the poor among us gives us precious opportunities to set aside our own worries and cares and reach out in love and service to help lighten someone else's burdens. If there were none who mourned or needed comfort or assistance in bearing the burdens of being poor in any of its varieties, then we would not be able to fulfill our baptismal covenants to comfort and mourn with and bear each other's burdens. And if we have found ourselves poor and in dire straits, we need not suppose that our poverty is merely because God wants us to suffer for our foolish actions or for the sole reason of refining us in the furnace of affliction. Rather, when we are poor, God has allowed us to suffer this setback in part so that others could have the opportunity to grow through service and love to us. We learn that the people of Enoch were so good at looking out for each other and reaching out when they were in need and reaching out when they saw others in need, that that were of one heart and one mind, and there were no poor among them (Moses 7:18), not because none of them ever had any problems, but because they were such a constant and integral part of each other's lives that none could feel the pinch of poverty for long before someone was there to help them. I hope that we can all get a little closer to being of one heart and one mind so that we do not become resentful of the poor when we are rich or resentful of the rich when we are poor, but will accept that we will have the poor with us always so that we may always have opportunities to serve and minister to and love one another.