Our Hope is in You, O Lord

He went around Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people. Matthew 4:23

With confidence in God's saving love for the lost, abandoned, hurt and suffering, we pray:

R Our hope is in you, O Lord

For the hopeless, the frightened, the needy and the oppressed:
- grant them strength through faith in You. R

For the deaf and blind, the injured and ill:
- heal all their ills. R

For the dying who await their judgment in fear:
- change their dread to joy. R
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10 Tips from Islam that any Family can do to Serve the Poor, Part II

Continued from, Saturday, October 4, 2008 ...

Today wraps up a two-part post containing valuable tips from Islam about how families, and for the matter individuals - how they can better make serving the poor a way of life. Here are tips 6-10...

6. Have a family garage sale and donate the proceeds to the poor
Do your kids get bored as the summer wears on? Get everyone to take out any unwanted toys, clothes, etc. from their closets. Then organize a garage sale. All of the money should go to a shelter or soup kitchen.

7. Visit a homeless shelter or soup kitchen as a family
We become so used to just opening up the fridge when we're hungry, we forget there are countless millions who don't have this luxury. Call up the local soup kitchen and ask if you can make the food there for one meal. Nothing fancy – just make some pasta for instance. Get the family and some friends to help too.

8. Make it a habit to meet with people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Have you noticed that all of your friends and social contacts are from the same economic class? Friendship must never be based on the size of a house or bank account. Teach yourself and your kids this valuable lesson.

9. Make one "poor" meal a month in the home
What do you usually eat for dinner as a family? If you've been eating rich, heavy food, give it a break for just one day out of the month. Make a very, very simple meal. This will give everyone a real live example of what it feels like to live with much less for a day.

10. Fast and make Dua for those living in poverty
One of the great things about fasting is that it makes you more aware of what it's like to live with hunger. Do a Nafl (optional) fast for a day. Get a friend to do it with you. When it's time to break your fast, make Dua for those who are living in poverty worldwide and ask Allah what you can do to help alleviate their suffering.
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10 Tips from Islam that any Family can do to Serve the Poor - Part I

Today begins a two-part post containing valuable tips from Islam about how families, and for the matter individuals - how they can better make serving the poor a way of life. Here are tips 1-5...

1. Make sure to pay Zakat
What is Zakat? It is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is the obligation we have to benefit the poor and the needy. Your family assets such as jewelry and a family business are "Zakatable". [Sounds like a "tax" or type of tithing]

2. Start a family Sadaqa (charity) box
Wouldn't it be great to give charity as a family? You can do this in a systematic way by setting up a family Sadaqa box in a particular spot of the house. Then, each person puts a portion of their allowance or salary in this box. Once a month, hold a family meeting to decide exactly where and to whom the money will go.

3. Have a "secret Sadaqa box"
Ideally, your left hand should not know what your right hand has given in charity. To encourage secret charity, put a secret Sadaqa box in the home. Tell the kids where it is hidden and why it is there. Monthly, decide as a family where the money should be given.

4. Be in regular social contact with community members
Do you think the only people who are really living in poverty are those who ask?  There are a number of people who, due to their sense of nobility and self-respect, cannot and will not ask from others, even if they are in need.

5. Use food wisely at parties
Where do you see so much good food wasted? Usually it is at weddings and dinner parties and social occasions. Once a party is over, drop off leftovers at a shelter for the homeless, a soup kitchen, or a family you personally know who is in need. To be continued next week…

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More on the Internet
http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/familytips.asp

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Just a Homeless Bum that Floats, Soars and Bilocates

You’ve heard the Apostle speak about entertaining angels, unawares while talking to strangers and visitors? However, how about this … All this time you’ve been encountering homeless bums on our city streets, you may have been entertaining saints unawares!

Consider that one such instance in history has been documented. Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, also known as the Beggar of Perpetual Adoration was the oldest of 15 children in a prosperous middle class family. Saint Labre was educated by his uncle, a parish priest. Following his uncle's death, he tried to join the Trappists, Carthusians, and Cistercians, but was rejected by them all.

The Saint spent years wandering Europe, especially Rome, in complete poverty as a homeless man, spending his days in perpetual adoration in the cathedrals. Given to religious ecstasies when contemplating the Crown of Thorns; reputed to float, soar, and bilocate. He begged in the streets, and if he was given more than he needed for the day, he would give the remainder to some one he considered more in need than he was.

He reportedly cured some of his fellow homeless, and reported to have multiplied bread for them. He was also a noted counselor to people of all walks and income brackets in Rome. He died in a hospice, exhausted from his life of austerity. His biography, written by his confessor Marconi, describes 136 miraculous cures attributed to him within three months of his death.
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Purple

For all the poor, lost, forgotten, crushed and abandoned, which is pretty much the whole of the human race – in God’s great desire for the glory of His grace to be revealed, God the Father predestined us to be adopted as His children. This was His will and pleasure says the Apostle, so that His glorious grace freely bestowed on us in His beloved might redound to His praise. Saint John Chrysostom, famed preacher and commentator on Holy Scripture said in this regard ... 

Clothing Him in Purple, Puts A Crown on His Head ...

“Why does God wish to be praised and glorified by us if not to make our love for Him more fervent? His desire is not to receive service or glory or anything else from us, but only for our salvation, and for this He made the whole world. Being filled with praise and wonder because of the grace bestowed on us will make us more diligent and more zealous.

“Imagine a man suffering from repugnant and infectious disease, and afflicted as well by old age, poverty and hunger. Suppose someone suddenly transforms him into a comely young man, surpassing all others in beauty, his cheeks glowing, his eyes shinning more brightly than the sun; and suppose that having endowed him thus with the bloom of youth, he then clothes him in purple, puts a crown on his head, and gives him all the insignia of the king. Well, that is exactly what God has done for your soul: He has made it beautiful, desirable and lovable. The angels, archangels, and all the powers of heaven desire to look upon such a soul. So He has made us pleasing and desirable in His eyes. As the Psalmist says, ‘The King will desire your beauty.’” St. John Chrysostom (+407)
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Jesus and the Prostitute

An HIA reader by the name of Nathan recently shared a true story about meeting Jesus in the poverty of a prostitute (sound familiar?) from a real-life experience of pastor, Tony Campolo. The “Agnes Story” as Tony calls it goes something like this …

The Agnes Story

It was one of the most extraordinary birthday parties ever held. No it wasn't in a plush ballroom of a grand hotel. No there weren't famous celebrities, nor anyone rich or powerful. Actually, it was held at 3am in a small seedy cafe in Honolulu, and of all people, the guest of honor was a prostitute. The fellow guests were prostitutes, and the man who threw it was a Christian preacher!

The idea came to Christian pastor Tony Campolo very early one morning as he sat in the cafe and overheard a fellow diner lament the fact that not only was it her 39th birthday tomorrow but that she never had a birthday party. She was a prostitute called Agnes and her friends showed her little to no sympathy.

Tony however thought it would be a great idea to surprise Agnes with a birthday party. Learning from the cafe owner that the ladies came in every morning around 3:30am, he agreed with Tony to set the place up for a party. Word somehow got out on the street, so that by 3:15 the next morning the place was packed with prostitutes, the cafe owner and his wife, and Tony.

When Agnes walked in she saw streamers, balloons, the cafe owner holding a birthday cake, and everyone screaming out "Happy Birthday!" Agnes was surprised and overwhelmed. The tears poured down her face as the crowd sang the “Happy Birthday” song.

It was a birthday party rarely seen in Honolulu - thrown by a Christian minister for a 39 year old prostitute who never had anyone go out of their way to do something like this and who expected nothing in return. Indeed, so surprising was this turn of events that the cafe owner found it hard to believe there were Christians out there that would do this sort of thing, but if there were then he wanted to be a real Christian and return to his faith.
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Techno-poverty begins at Home

The "poverty" of  people and families not connecting is a scene that frequently plays out in restaurants and home dining rooms everywhere. The family scenario goes something like this … Sadly, a mom or dad is found staring at the walls - lost in loneliness while a spouse speaks on a cell phone, a daughter may feverishly type sending text messages and a son may fervently play games on his cell phone -  all pretending to be together, but not really.

The noise has become so great in our lives, hasn’t it? We visit but we don’t interact. We talk but we don’t have conversations. We are with each other but we don’t have relationships. Mother Teresa once said in this regard, long before the techno – poverty invasion of our homes and relationships … “Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.” Blessed Mother Teresa
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The Real Meaning of the Word Compassion!

In regards to A New Poll is Launched, see Monday, September 22, 2008, Anonymous writes ... "A good number of homeless people are people, that are mentally sick. Some of them; are so sick that literally speaking; they dont even know who they are, what their names are, or even realizing that they are living in the streets. Just based in this fact of their situation; it is totally irresponsible on our part to expect from them, that they can go, get a job, straighten up their lives or clean up their act. If we try at least, once in our lifetime, to open our hearts, and to put ourselves in their shoes, trying to think for a moment, what it will be, to be living a life like that, trying to really put ourselves in that people's skin, if only for a minute or a day. THAT is the real meaning of the word Compassion! That is what compassion is all about: To put myself, in the person's situation. To feel in my own skin the cold, the pain, the hunger, the desperation the solitude, the rejection of the others; my very own sisters and brothers, the total emptiness of the human soul. It is Christ again, living the Calvary and the Cross, dying; again and again, time after time, in a never ending Via Crucis [Way of the Cross]. I pray, that God will open our hearts just for a minute and really ask Him to have the opportunity to be the Simon of Cyrene for our brothers and sisters in need."

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Another New Poll is Launched

Today, a new poll about the homeless was launched below, near the bottom of this main page. Here, in today’s blog is the expanded version of the poll’s three questions. After reading them, scroll down and respond to the abbreviated version. Everyone would like to know what you think!

New Poll

When the subject of the homeless is brought up casually among my family or friends, it has been my experience that most people react by saying something like …

*  Why can’t they work like the rest of us; you know, go out and get any job – like dishwasher or busboy in a restaurant?

*  My family immigrated to this country with not even a shirt on their backs and we made it – they can go out and work hard just like we did to solve their problems.

*  It’s a complex problem, homeless people need us to take the time to love and understand them.
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Did Jesus really advocate Homelessness?

by

The Salvation Army

Besides the fact that Jesus was born homeless, at least for that one night; what is perhaps of greater interest is the fact that Jesus chose the way of homelessness during his three years of ministry. In Luke 9 Jesus responds to a man who says he will follow him wherever he goes: 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'

But did Jesus really advocate homelessness? Did he really tell us to reject our families? That seems very irresponsible of him, does it not? Jesus does urge his followers to take no thought of their life; he tells a wealthy man to sell everything and give it to the poor and he makes some shocking demands of family disloyalty. But Jesus is talking about where people put their trust, where they find their security. Jesus was a man who had conquered fear, and did not need the security of an earthly home, because he knew exactly who he was and where his security lay. His home was the Kingdom of God, and the work of that Kingdom was first in his life.

The question we must ask (and it is not a comfortable one) is this: where is our heart and our home? That is, where have we stored up our treasures? Where does our security lie? Does it rest in our families, our material wealth, our society? It is not enough to simply follow a path that is deemed safe from the perspective of the world. We need to find our home elsewhere, to fix our eyes on things that are eternal, and we need to live that out in our daily walk.

Jesus’ identification with the poor and homeless is therefore a potential source of great strength for the homeless in our world today. But we who are his followers must be prepared to identify in the same way, to see ourselves as brothers and sisters of the destitute, to treat them not as objects of our pity, but as sharers in our love and community.

Jesus was homeless. It is too small a thing to say we follow Jesus but still cling tightly to our earthly security. Are we prepared to give up our 'homes'? Are we prepared to see Jesus in the face of the homeless today?
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More on the Internet
http://www1.salvationarmy.org/
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