Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [17]
We will help more and more people, such as José Ferreira. He runs a small pharmacy in a slum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It’s really more a tin-walled shed and bench, but since he sells medicine, it bears the hand-painted sign Farmácia. He started his store with three dollars’ worth of medical supplies that he bought from a larger pharmacy downtown. As soon as he sells the medicine, he closes his store, walks to a nearby bus stop, rides one hour to the larger pharmacy, and buys more stock.
By the time he returns, it is dark, so he waits until the next morning and repeats the cycle: open, sell the product, close the store, and travel to purchase inventory. Some days he does this twice. Since his store is closed as much as it is open, he scarcely makes a profit. He and his family live in the back of the shack and subsist on the equivalent of three dollars a day. If rains flood the favela and wash away his shack, he will lose everything. If one of his children comes down with dengue fever, he likely will not have the money for medicine. José knows this. But what can he do? He indwells the low-ceilinged world of the poor.
But while José is struggling in Rio, God is working in London. A good-hearted taxi driver named Thomas reads an article in a magazine. It details the fascinating process of microfinance. Microfinance provides small loans to poor people so they can increase their income and decrease their vulnerability to unforeseen circumstances. Thomas is not rich, but he is blessed. He would happily help a fellow businessperson on the other side of the world. But how can he? Can a British taxi driver help a Brazilian merchant? Through microfinance organizations, he can.
So he does.
A few days later José is offered a microloan of fifty-five dollars. In order to qualify for it, however, he has to join a borrower group of six neighboring businessmen. Each one receives a loan, but each member of the group cross-guarantees the loans of the other members. In other words, if José does not repay the loan, his friends have to cover for him. (Peer pressure turned positive.)
José puts the loan to good use. With the extra capital he is able to reduce his purchasing trips to once a week and keep his store open all day. After two years of growing his business and paying back his loans, he saves a thousand dollars, buys a plot of land in the favela, and is collecting cinder blocks for a house.1
How did this happen? Whom did God use to help José Ferreira? A taxi driver. A humanitarian organization. Fellow favela dwellers. They all worked together. Isn’t this how God works?
This is how he worked in Jerusalem. The congregation is a microcosm of God’s plan. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. And when we do, statements such as these will be read more often: “The apostles testified powerfully to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God’s great blessing was upon them all. There were no needy people among them” (Acts 4:33–34 NLT).
Our only hope is to work together.
Some years back a reporter covering the conflict in Sarajevo saw a little girl shot by a sniper. The back of her head had been torn away by the bullet. The reporter threw down his pad and pencil and stopped being a reporter for a few minutes. He rushed to the man who was holding the child and helped them both into his car. As the reporter stepped on the accelerator, racing to the hospital, the man holding the bleeding child said, “Hurry, my friend. My child is still alive.”
A moment or two later he pleaded, “Hurry, my friend. My child is still breathing.” A moment later, “Hurry, my friend. My child is still warm.”
Finally, “Hurry. Oh my God, my child is getting cold.”
By the time they arrived at the hospital, the little girl had died. As the two men were in the lavatory, washing the blood off their hands and their clothes, the man turned to the reporter and said, “This is a terrible task for me. I must go tell her father that his child is dead. He will be heartbroken.”
The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man and said, “I thought