Recently, while driving me home, Dad asked, "What do you think it means to mock the poor? Have you ever experienced a situation where others were mocking them? . . . Who do you think the poor really are?"
Since mocking the poor is considered a reproach to God, it would certainly be helpful to our walk with Christ to consider what mocking really means and who the word 'poor' is referring to!
Although it is clear in the Scriptures that God has compassion on the poor in the more literal sense of the word, I came to understand that the word "poor" is not limited to finances. After all, people can be poor in looks, cant they? How about poor in talent? Or maybe poor in favorable circumstances? As I applied a more liberal definition of one being poor, the Lord opened my eyes to how the respect of persons (perhaps unwittingly out of our natural tendency to make presumptions) is abundant in these times, and how it is likewise an insult to the Creator! After all, is God not the Designer of one's physical features? Did He not providentially bestow on this or that person a certain amount of talent - or lack thereof? Is He not intimately involved in the earthly rewards of His children?
To mock those things that God has designed, provided and allowed, is to despise [shrink in value] His perfect wisdom, authority and sovereignty.
"Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker."
Proverbs 17:5
Labels: SCRIPTURE
