Attempting to define "Poor"

Poverty is real. I walk out my door every day and am struck by it.
Think about the reality of this question, "Why am I not poor?". I mean real "poor"--not like "my parents didn't send me to summer camp", "we only had basic cable", "I had to share a room with my sister", "I wore hand-me-downs", "we always bought off brand", or "I drive my mom's old car". We have all made those comments, and thinking on it now, geez, we are petty people. "Poor" to me now is like you don't eat a nutritional diet because rice is the only thing you can afford, have tattered clothes of the opposite gender, shoes where your heel hangs out or has worn through the shoe, or sleeping on dirt. All of these things are reality for people in my own neighborhood.

Everyone has this mental picture of what poverty is. When I hear the word, my American mind goes to a scraggly man with a cardboard sign on the intersection of County Line and I-55. The next image is of a group of little African kids with swollen bellies who are playing with a plastic bag. Another vision is that of a over-crowded orphanage with three babies to a bed, people living in tents as far as the eye can see, or having to step over sleeping people on the street. One pictuer dear to my heart is the lady who sleeps leaning against the "Aeroport" sign every night with her little girl. I have seen all of these images firsthand. It is heartbreaking, and I feel for them. As a reaction, my heart goes into shock when I hear a friend say "Oh, well I'm poor". Being a college student and having a friend who couldn't go eat because they were "poor", a friend sad they didn't get what they wanted for Christmas because they were "poor". My immediate thought is "yeah, ya don't even know". We only know what we've seen. If that is your idea of poor, I encourage you to get out there. Check out our big world.
I know it is just a phrase people toss around casually, but really stop and think about what it would be like. If we didn't live in a world of excess or hoarding. If we didn't live in a world where people literally trample each other to get to a discounted game system (the day after they celebrate being so "thankful").  If we lived in a world where people were satisfied with simplicity and living within their means. If we could eat to the point of being full and not to being stuffed (I don't just mean food ;-) ). We do live in a world like that, but we are excluded from it. We have separated ourselves from poverty because we have "earned" our wealthy lives.

I read this really great article by Dale Bourke on Christian Today called "Why am I not poor?". It really got my mind going of how reality can change quickly, suddenly, and we have no way of stopping it. We could all so easily be poor, and most of the world is.  And I mean the real kind of poor.

How thankful are you? How are you going to help?