October 11, 2018: Day 61 – Proverbs 19

Do you feel like these chapters seem to run together and overlap each other?  There continues to be advice on how to live and underlined is the necessity to treat the poor with dignity and respect.  I love the line where it states that when you give to the poor, you are giving to the Lord.  Look at vs.17.  There is not the sense that we see in some circles today that the poor just haven’t applied themselves enough and so are to be scoffed and mocked and not taken seriously.  We simply do not know their story or why they are in the position in which they find themselves.

Since we do not know that story then we are to treat them with the same dignity and respect that we treat our own family members because they should be considered family.  We do see a lot of emphasis on how we ought to treat the poor and I like that in Proverbs.  It is a bit ironic because we have a king, King Solomon, writing about the poor when he was the richest man in the land.  But he was also a man of God, so I guess he got it.