What's so good about being poor?

Monika Hellwig gives us some advantages of being poor:

 1. The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption.
 2. The poor know not only their dependence on God and on
     powerful people, but also their interdependence with one
     another.
 3. The poor rest their security, not on things, but on people.
 4. The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance
     and no exaggerated need for privacy.
 5. The poor expect little from competition and much from
     cooperation.
 6. The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries.
 7. The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged
     patience born of acknowledged dependence.
 8. The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated,
     because they already know that one can survive great suffering
     and want.
 9. When the poor have the Gospel preached to them, it sounds
     like good news, and not like a threat or a scolding
10.The poor can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain
     abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so
     little to lose and are ready for anything.


--This list is found in The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.....today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing....    Isaiah 6l:1-2; Luke 4:18, 21