What Causes Change?

Every now and then a person has one of those moments that really get them thinking. This happened to me the other week. One thing you will notice about Cape Town, or about South Africa in general are the amount of homeless around. Kalk Bay, where I live, is no exception. I can walk to the corner store, less than five minutes away, and be asked three times for money or food. As it is there are many days where I spend more money on food for someone on the street than on whatever snack I was planning to get. On one morning such as this I was walking back to Media Village with a nice new latte I had just gotten at my favorite coffee shop down the road. I had just given a pastry to Stanley, one of the guys on the street I have gotten to be friends with during my time out here. On the last few blocks from home I was approached by a kid, maybe ten or eleven asking for money. I had none left and he would not take no for an answer. So, after several blocks of me telling him I had absolutely no money and finally at the point of almost yelling at the kid I decided to just hand him my coffee.
A couple minutes later a thought passed through my head: As soon as his drink is done, the kid will go back to begging. Tomorrow the same thing. The guys I see on the street each day have the same story. They have survived for years without me around, many of them have been on the street for a majority of there lives. And whether I give them food or not will have little difference. So even though I am befriending some of them, and even though I am giving them food, I am having absolutely no lasting effect of any kind when it comes to changing these peoples lives for the better.
Jesus, when talking to the woman at the well touches on something similar when talking about living water. He tells the woman that he is the Messiah, the source of eternal life. Now aside from bringing people closer to Jesus, another thing we as christians need to focus on are needs here and now.
One thing anyone investing in anything wants to see some pay off. Personally it kills me to give away what little I can give and have it have no effect on helping others meet needs. So I have decided to put a part of what I would normally use to buy food for some of the guys on the street (not all of it mind you, cause I still like helping the guys out.) and start putting it aside and giving it to ministries that are focused on rehabilitation and empowering people to earn money. This way I can maximize what little money I have to have a greater effect.
Now the biggest reason I mention this is because as Christ followers we should be focused on bringing as much of the kingdom of God to earth as possible. One of the ways we can do this is to work at eliminating systemic poverty. I love how in Matthew 6 talks about “When you give to the needy” I love how he uses “when”, not “if”. An “if” is uncertain, when denotes expectation.
So we are expected to give, how can we do it wisely?

Things at Media Village are going well. As you may have noticed this update is out a good few weeks later than I intended. So most of the recent going ons I will post in the next update in a couple weeks.
To say the least I have been very busy. Been working most of my weekends since being back, which can be a bit tiring.
We started a new school on friday and I am in charge of work duties and helping with intercession on mondays. I really love working with schools so this should be a fun quarter.

God Bless,
~Jeff