miranda’s story

Picture yourself working as a minister in an inner-city church. Your ministry is responsible for not only the spiritual growth of those in your church community, but also, within reason, for assisting the practical needs of your congregants. On the surface, this seems like a straightforward assignment: your city is one of the world’s great metropolises of the early 21st century - a thriving hub for business, a focal point for many of the world’s leading organizations, and a multicultural melting-pot that results in cutting-edge innovation in arts, the media, and entertainment.

Yet scratch beneath the shiny surface of wealth and glamour, and a tale of two cities emerge. More than a quarter of residents are considered to be living below the poverty line – defined as having a household income that is less than 60% of the national median – and this figure escalates dramatically when the exorbitant cost of housing in the city is considered. Though housing in the city is among the most expensive in the world, almost a quarter of homes have failed to reach a standard decency considered acceptable for the 21st century. Additionally, all the social indicators that correlate with poverty – early mortality, teenage pregnancy, childhood disadvantage, families living in temporary accommodation, individuals sleeping rough, working adults living under the poverty line – are on the increase, even beyond the indicators of far poorer cities elsewhere in the country.

Amidst this, a young single mum - let’s call her Miranda - asks you to meet her. This young mum is friendly and intelligent, and she is respectfully punctual to your appointment. Her little son joins you both: he cannot be more than two years old but he politely and quietly entertains himself with a single, small toy as the two adults speak. You sense immediately that this young lady would make both an excellent employee and an admirable mother. Yet she is here, speaking to you as a representative of your church, to seek assistance.

She needs help, and you rightly presume that the help she needs is financial.

Miranda is a new, legal immigrant to your country and cannot find gainful employment. She is behind on her rent and her private landlord is threatening eviction, despite the ethical and legal minefield that he faces by sending a mother and child on to the streets. With neither friends nor family in the city, she has reluctantly swallowed her pride and admits to you her vulnerability. If it were not for her son, you suspect her proud self-reliance would have led her to the streets - but which self-respecting mother would expose her child to even one night outside in the cold, unpredictable city? 

As a minister, what do you do? How do you engage with this situation both compassionately and intelligently? By all means, you have the resources to help with immediate concerns – your church generously and faithfully designates a portion of its budget to meeting practical needs such as this. But you have a responsibility to steward that resource well, as it comes from the steadfast giving of families and church members every month. You are also aware of the tricks and scams of people, particularly in large cities, who visit several churches and charities with the same story of desperation, and effectively end up on the informal payroll of multiple goodwillers. You are furthermore concerned about dependency, and you do not want to encourage a revolving door of aid that leads to reliance or even entitlement. You are smart enough to recognise that such arrangements are unbeneficial for the long-term health of both the giver and the receiver. You have some decisions to make.

Jesus made it specifically clear that ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’ (Matthew 25:40)

Those are words you do not want to take lightly.

Miranda’s story was a story with which Dr Barnard became all-too familiar. The details may have changed – at one point a single mother, at another a retired gentlemen with enormous health costs, at another a young man newly-released from prison – but the question remained the same: how can we intelligently and compassionately act in this situation in a way that meets the need, takes steps to prevent the need from arising again, reflects a faithful stewardship of the resources at hand, and encourages the God-given dignity of all parties concerned?

The good news is that Miranda’s story was changed. Miranda was able to be helped. Miranda re-wrote the script for her and her son. Poverty was not who she was; it was just what she was experiencing.

When Dr. Barnard spoke to her a year after partnering with her, Miranda was gainfully employed, her son was in school, and she was supporting her family in a two-bedroom apartment. When he naturally said, “A bedroom for you and one for your son?” she replied, “Yes, but his room is also convertible into an adult’s room.”

“Now I can care for my family, and I want to be able to pay it forward to others who find themselves facing the same challenges I did.”