What We Should Already Know About Poverty

I've been thinking about poverty due to articles like this one: Progress in the War on Poverty

And this one: Swallowing Their Pride to Avoid Going Hungry

And this one: Lunches seized from kids in debt at Salt Lake City Elementary (Yes, that says ELEMENTARY school.)

Instead of a post by me about poverty I'm just going to leave you with the quotes that keep rattling through my brain when I read these articles and the cold commentary that can be found below them on each news site.

"He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again." - Proverbs 19:17 (KJV Version)
"Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done." - Proverbs 19:17 (NIV Version)

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.” 
― Thomas More, Utopia

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!” 
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” 
― Mother Teresa

(I swear my next post will be lighter! So many heavy socio-political posts lately.)