THE MYTH OF POVERTY-BY GREG ELKAN

_“He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men._– Eph 4:8

It’s a well-established fact that human poverty is an artificially created phenomenon. There is no net lack of resources in the world itself, in fact, we’re disproportionately supplied. 

According to current statistical data, there’re twice as many overweight people in the world today as there are undernourished ones. Also, in the space of 24 hours, about 20,000 persons will die of hunger around the world. In that same timeframe, people will spend 164 _million_ dollars trying to lose weight! Indeed, 3.6 million _tonnes_ of food are thrown away _each day;_ in a world with 800 million hungry people. Dare we accuse God of not giving us enough? 

But on an even more personal level, can we claim God gave us nothing to work with? No! No one came into this world empty; each one of us came fully loaded with every resource to fulfil our destinies. As proof, look no further than our Lord’s apparently contradictory statement in Mat 13:12, _“For whosoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever has not, from him shall be taken away even what he has._

Our Lord repeats this statement again, twice, when talking about the “pounds” (Lk 19:26) and later about the “talents” (Mt 25:29). This shows that the judgement for those who insist that God gave them nothing, is the taking away of that supposed “nothing” that they claim from them. 

Beloved, God has endowed each one of us with unique tangible and intangible “seeds” – gifts that money cannot buy: intelligences, strengths, relationships, favour, access, ideas, etc. Much of these are obvious upon introspection; others are remarkably subtle: like the decade you were born, your proximity to certain calamities… or your unusual tendency to notice people’s hair, (this particular gift helped one scientist in a research project that upended centuries of established archaeological and genetic scientific wisdom)!

But even in the natural, seeds seldom look like the plants that they contain; so the onus is ultimately on us to look in our inward cupboards – no matter how bare they may seem at first glance – to find the priceless seeds of that God has placed there for us to thrive with.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus' name. 

GREG ELKAN

+234 813 664 2912

- Nigeria