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Wealth and Poverty


The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. (Proverbs 10:15)

           Before 9/11, Americans tended to think of our country, the wealthiest nation on Earth, as being safe. It was a walled city without walls. Even our poorest people make more money and live better than more than half the world. I’m tempted to suggest that our poorest live better than 90% of the world, but I’m not sure of that statistic. 
          If you talk to me, or to many Americans, however, you’re not likely to hear us talking about how rich we are. I know that I am lavishly blessed, but I don’t tend to see any money that I have as being mine to spend as I wish. Whatever I have has to last me the rest of my life, so while it’s there, my perspective tends to be that I am a poor, or it is needed as an investment in my writing career. 
          As I look at today’s proverb and consider my own state, I reach the conclusion that the wealthy trust in their wealth and think of themselves as wealthy, while the poor focus on their poverty, even if they aren’t really without income. It’s about perception. That is that this passage seems to me to be about. We found out on September 11, 2001, that our fortified city couldn’t protect us, and I think that hurt us as much as the deaths. The poor see their poverty as an insurmountable barrier that has ruined their lives.
          Seeing either our wealth or our poverty as what protects, defines us, determines our fate, etc. is normal, but it’s a bad norm because it traps us in harmful states of mind.

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