DESTITUTE

There are all kinds of poverty. The type that impacts you pocket book always gets a person's attention.

But whether we are rich or poor in terms of material wealth, I think spiritual poverty is always much more difficult to have to embrace. You can find means to hope for that next form of provision, but if you feel there is no hope it just won't seem to matter.

I've seen this kind of destitution so often. People of affluence who are dead inside. They don't lack for means of pleasure, but are miserable just the same.

Not that being poor brings happiness. It isn't the same in terms of when you have an empty stomach and not sure when the next meal will come.

Still, even though material needs do have a purpose and more so when you don't have them, they won't fill a hole in the spirit. People try, but never really works.

I was watching this man giving speech the other night. It was filled with vision and meant to inspire hope.

But the hope was all linked to what you had. That if you followed his advice and counsel it would lead to happiness.

There was no mention of God or faith, nothing about the need for the kind of joy only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit. Sadly this is the voice that often gets the most attention.

This is not to say he didn't have a point. Or that there was no value to his advice. Only that in reality, the end result was not going to be utopia.

I wish this life did offer that. How often we do so crave the need for some place without suffering or pain.

And we know that the path of faith doesn't guarantee the absence of pain. Some have suggested it, but the Lord never promised paradise on this earth.

He did tell us that we would know tribulation. Not quite the uplifting message we might prefer, but it wasn't meant to depress.

It was meant to convey the truth. That our path in life carries with it demands. Those include times of challenge as part of the trials of faith.

There is joy too. The occasions when some comfort comes. But it is always tide by the Lord to His way.

And if we can't find that joy in what He grants on the wisdom of His way, all the money in the world won't matter.