Being Poor Is Good?

In the world we live in, poverty is considered to be a curse. The idea for most people is to get an education and then go out and make as much money as possible. The  goal that many have in mind is to live out their dreams of owning a big house, having a new car every couple of years and retiring with a fat bank account in their name.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s wrong to have money or to be wealthy. It is unfortunate but true that we need a certain amount of money to live and to provide security for our families now and in the future. However, pursuing riches and possessions can be a very short-sighted goal and it often causes a person to focus on the wrong things and develop the wrong values in their life.

It’s interesting to note how many of the people that changed the world grew up poor. It seems that not having much materially caused them to strive harder to make something of themselves both personally as well as in business etc. It is equally interesting to observe those who grew up with the proverbial “Silver Spoon” in their mouth. A lot of wealthy parents had children who never became much in life and often were addicted to various substances and just drifted through life spending their inherited wealth and feeling self-important and entitled. Now that’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of poor people who also are addicted and feel self-important and entitled, but the point that I’m making is that being poor is not necessarily a bad thing.

As a matter of fact, being poor can be a great motivator. It has long been said that “Necessity is the mother of invention”.  It can also teach someone to be thrifty ie. “Waste not, want not”.

In survival, the ability to make do with what is at hand, or to come up with inexpensive ways to enjoy the outdoors is a real skill worth developing. On my YouTube channel, WayPoint Survival, I often highlight cheap, easy, do-it-yourself ways to improvise various types of gear and cookware. I feel that should the need arise and should a person ever be in a real survival situation, having the skills to make what you need is far more important than having a lot of money in the bank. As many of you have noticed, there are no ATM’s or stores in the backwoods.

When I was growing up, my family would have been considered “below the poverty level” in many ways. But, we always had enough to eat and a roof over our heads. We didn’t have the latest styles of clothing or new cars, but we had what we needed and our home was filled with love. We learned to use our imaginations and my childhood memories are full of days spent in the outdoors, building forts, making trails, eating  berries and pretending to be a frontiersman, usually Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett. We played “Pioneer” with my Radio Flyer wagon, which had a wooden frame my father built and an old bed sheet fastened around it for a covered wagon. I was the “horse” and I would pull my sister and brother around the home place as we went from adventure to adventure in the “Pioneer Days”.  We didn’t have air conditioning in those days and it was a great motivator to get out in the woods where it was cooler to play. Video games were around but we were too poor to keep up with them. We didn’t get a video game system until I was a teenager and my dad brought home an Atari 2600 system with 20 games in a cardboard box that he had purchased at a yard sale for $5. We didn’t have television in our home as my parents considered it to be a great time waster and so we had an old 12 inch black and white TV to play our video games on, also purchased second hand for little money.  My mother didn’t want the TV in the main part of the house and since it was only for the Atari, we kept it up in the attic which had a floor but no walls. It got really hot up there in the summer and we didn’t spend much time playing those games in the Summer! As a result, I developed a love for the outdoors and began making my own knives and machetes at a very early age, a skill that I have continued to use to this very day. Being poor was good for me!

Spiritually speaking, Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.  Having poverty of spirit doesn’t mean that we have a low self-esteem or that we go around depreciating ourselves to others, it means that we have developed humility and a proper perspective on who we are. Shakespeare said to “…To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man”.  To be pure in heart, pure in motivation and pure in your thoughts is a great achievement and goal for any person. Being poor in spirit is not easy for a world that is filled with self-indulgence and self-boasting!

How about you? Have you learned to enjoy poverty or are you always complaining about the things you don’t have? Maybe God has given you the gift of poverty so that you can learn the true meaning of life, learn to depend on Him and develop the skills that you need to make it in this world and provide real value for those around you.  Remember, when you die, you can’t take it with you.  So, learn how to be content with the things you have and the blessings of this day and you will have found the secret to true happiness. So, yes, being poor is good, it just depends on how you look at it!

Thanks for reading!

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James B