It’s hard to explain EXTREME poverty to most adults in America – we tend to picture the homeless person, (with clothes and shoes and not usually a picture of malnourishment) standing on the corner with a message written on a piece of cardboard – will work for food, or some other saying. Seth Barnes had a great blog post here that really helped put in perspective the difference between poverty in America and “Extreme Poverty”.

I think this is even more difficult for the mind of a child – maybe we try to shelter them from the images of what real poverty is, or in reality, our American media rarely even highlights this issue. But it is real and we want to educate our children and allow God to form in their heart a compassion to help those who are in need, and to see how abundantly blessed we are and that we have a responsibility to be good stewards of everything God has entrusted to us to manage.

We try to use teachable moments – whether responding to a comment like “Daddy, I’m starving” (see this post), or why do we have to eat this? Or whether sitting together reading God’s word during family worship time and explaining that God has made us managers of all of creation, or why we don’t go out to eat as much as we used to (so we can save toward our adoption), or praying that our kids in Ethiopia or the ones we support through World Vision will have enough food to eat.

These are things that we believe are at the heart of God and things that we should teach our children, and pray for them that God would place love and compassion for others on their hearts. To read more about how others explain extreme poverty to their children, check out Red Letters Campaign.