It’s generally not a welcome sight. And it’s not something that is often seen in my neighborhood, nor probably in yours either. But in the neighborhood where my wife and I had our first apartment, it was not unusual to see a man diving in the dumpster outside our apartment for small bits of edible food remains or trinkets he might sell for his next bottle.
In our neighborhood, pedestrians pushing stolen grocery carts that held their life savings in 33-gallon trash bags was likewise not uncommon. And panhandlers at street corners were almost expected. Walk to the store around the corner and you would invariably be asked for a bit of change for food or drink.
Jesus was right — the poor, the beggars, we always will have with us.
But for all the beggars who used to cross our line of sight, there are multiplied more around us every day — we are just insensible to see them because we do not see into the recesses of men’s souls. For most beggars are not those who are poor outwardly; most poverty is contained in the destitute regions of the soul. The real poor are the poor in spirit — those who are spiritually bankrupt.
And that is all of us. And when we see and understand and embrace that truth, it becomes good news for us. Jonathan Edwards explains:
They who truly come to God for mercy, come as beggars, and not as creditors: they come for mere mercy. for sovereign grace, and not for any thing that is due. Therefore, they must see that the misery under which they lie is justly brought upon them, and that the wrath to which they are exposed is justly threatened against them; and that they have deserved that God should be their enemy, and should continue to be their enemy. They must be sensible that it would be just with God to do as he hath threatened in his holy law, viz. make them the objects of his wrath and curse in hell to all eternity.– They who come to God for mercy in a right manner are not disposed to find fault with his severity; but they come in a sense of their own utter unworthiness, as with ropes about their necks, and lying in the dust at the foot of mercy. [“Pardon for the Greatest Sinners”]
Words of Grace 