Everyone living in Poverty didn’t start off there.
Many with a very nice income, just like you: a two-car garage, a boat, the perfect life– three kids, a fenced-in yard, and a dog. Then all in a sudden-reality hits you. It may have taken you years to reach the middle or high-income level, but it only takes two quick New York seconds to enter the danger zone of poverty.
The arrogance of taking your immediate financial stability for granted: lack of planning for the unimaginable, the unforeseen, the unpredictable, and that one uneventful occurrence. This leads to financial tension, stress, and pressure, it has led to the destruction of the family’s relationship and ultimate divorce.
The Chief Misconception is that it couldn’t happen to ME. Poverty has no respect of person or position, once you enter that zone it seems there is no way out-it’s like a black hole, it keeps sucking you in deeper and deeper.
- Poor: Lacking material possessions, less than adequate, inferior in quality or value, humble, unpretentious, unproductive, indifferent, and unfavorable.
- Persistent: Existing for a long or longer than usual time or continuously: as retaining beyond the usual period, continuing without change in function or structure, effective in the open for an appreciable time usual, through slow volatilizing, degrading slowly by the environment, remaining infective for a relatively long time in a vector after an initial period of incubation, in-spite-of interference or treatment.
- Poverty is: INDIGENCE, PENURY, WANT, DESTITUTION. Poverty is–more than Poor. The state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Poverty may cover a range from extreme want of necessities to an absence of material comforts. Indigence implies seriously straitened circumstances, Penury suggests a cramping or oppressive lack of money. Want and Destitution imply extreme poverty that threatens life itself through starvation or exposure.
- Webster Collegiate Dictionary: Poor & Poverty
True Story:
He didn’t lack knowledge nor mental capacity,- But something happened!. His name was John, he was well known as the downtown homeless man. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. John persisted to exist for a longer than usual time-continuously degrading slowly by ‘his’ environment.
The last time I spoke with John it was about 90 degrees outside. John reached into a Restaurant dumpster and was eating out of a plastic bag which contained: pancakes & syrup, red beans & rice, cottage cheese, broccoli, hot sauce, steak, onions, milk, beets and corn flakes-table scrap.
The steam from the 90 degree temperature produced an indescribable odor. With tears in my eyes I asked “John are you all right”, he said –“No”–. That was the last time I ever saw John.
Extreme Poverty threatens Life itself, through Starvation and Exposure.
At one point in his life, John was a regular person just like you and I, he was not always an alcoholic or a victim of hopelessness. – be careful – Note: many agencies and people tried helping John throughout the years.
That ‘ONE’ Uneventful Occurrence can subject you to the Devastation of Poverty!!
- Be Patient to Prosper.
Believe in God more-than you believe in your Circumstances.
God Bless…