PODCAST
00:18:14 minute listenThere are times in life when you read a book, watch a speech, or hear a profound thought that deeply challenges you to think about something in an entirely different way – like the topic of poverty.
On the podcast today is a conversation with my husband, Chris Glubish.
Chris and I are reading a book together that has led us to a series of stumbling’s challenging us in our view of poverty. These stumbling’s have caused us to consider and confront a deadly form of poverty that is permeating culture at alarming speeds = the poverty of isolation.
Typical poverty is defined in terms of financial lack. But in our wealthy, homogenous, safe and clean-cut communities – that don’t fit the typical impoverished definition – how can we be used to stave off this growing disease of isolated poverty?
We can learn a lot from the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus wasn’t poor. His position in life carried much power, privilege and prestige. But he was despised by the people and Jesus saw, felt and understood his depths of loneliness.
Is this not a challenge for us all?
Perhaps in the midst of our privileged communities, it’s time to think differently about poverty and see isolation as one of our culture’s greatest forms of it. Perhaps it’s time we go out of our way, like Jesus, to have dinner with the unlikely impoverished. And perhaps we need to be heightened and aware to the fact that God might just be leading us to embrace those like Zacchaeus and their hidden forms of poverty.
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Mentioned In This Podcast:
- Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis
- The Crowded House
- Loneliness Is The Greatest Poverty – video
- Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery
- The Story of Jesus and Zacchaeus