Rich and Poor Meet – Proverbs 22:2

One of the beauties of When Helping Hurts, the profound book by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, is its definition of poverty.  As they say, “Poverty is not just a lack of money. It is not just hunger and need for shelter or clothing. Many poor people are plagued with social and spiritual poverty, and their view of their value is also affected.”  This means that a financially rich person can be impoverished (spiritually, emotionally, socially, etc.) and a financially poor person can be rich.

The rich and the poor meet together; the LORD is the Maker of them all. (Proverbs 22:2, ESV)

We are so prone to making relationships that benefit us and rationalizing it by labeling people as better or worse.  The proverbs have spoken about the “friends” the rich have and whom the poor lack because the poor can give so little of monetary value to a relationship.

But there is actually a great thing the rich and the poor have in common, which should erase these distinctions we make and draw us together.  Yahweh made us both.  We are all made in the same image, the image of God.  We each have the same mandate to multiply, subdue the earth and have dominion.  We are each made for loving one another and finding richness in one another, the kind of richness that is not monetary but relational.

I know a temptation that those of us who are rich will have with regard to the poor should we seek out relationship with them.  We will want to better them, save them.  And this is not entirely bad.  It is a step in the right direction.  But we will be impoverished in our relationship if we fail to realize that they can save us also.  I love how Paul appealed to his mostly Gentile churches to help support the Jewish church of Jerusalem financially because of how the Jewish church had already enriched the Gentiles (2 Corinthians 9).

We have much to share with each other.