Sunday morning, in our lobby at church, I met a lady. She was small in stature, I’d guess around 50 yrs. old, with a lovely countenance on her face. After introducing myself, I complimented her on her funky designer style boots. She smiled broadly and shared that she had found them in a dumpster, but had originally seen them at a boot store for $200.00. I hoped my face did not relay the surprise in an offensive way. “ You must really know where the good dumpsters are!”
She continued. ”I get most of my clothes from dumpsters. As a matter of a fact, I usually only wear my clothes a few times before throwing them away.”
My curious expression brought further explanation. “It’s too expensive to take them to a laundry mat, so I just keep getting new ones from the dumpsters. You’d be amazed what people throw out. I might wash some undergarments by hand, but I can’t afford to clean the clothes”.
I can’t get the conversation off of my mind. I can’t imagine not being able to wash my clothes. Even decades ago, being a self-supported, extremely poor college student, I would go to a laundry mat. I also couldn’t afford to buy clothes, but knew how to sew, and made and repaired my own. And I lived in a very low cost apartment with found furniture, with rent eating up the majority of my income, leaving very little to buy groceries.
But this enlightenment brings new questions. How poor are our city’s poor? How do they exist day to day? How do they get food? Our church is involved in numerous care ministries, which is one of the main reasons we chose to attend this particular church. But how do I, now a middle income women living in a lovely home, come to grips with the modern poor?
“As you do to the least of these, you do to me.” I am in process of learning, and will update.
What do you think? Please leave a comment.
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