I don’t know why this image came to mind as I prepared my class lecture. The lecture is for a class exploring the family. The lesson is on poverty.  Perhaps the image tied somehow to my mind is simply another bookmark to return to later.

On September 15, 2015 the U.S. Census Bureau released its report on poverty for the year 2014. I sat and looked at the words I typed on my computer. Numbers. I’ve spent most of my adult life working with numbers and trying to explain the story behind the numbers. Tonight, I struggled. A talent, perhaps a gift I had used for so many years had left me. I didn’t know how to tell the story.

For a family consisting of two adults and two children, the poverty rate (including supplemental benefits provided to the family) is $24,008 a year.

12.3 million children, under the age of 18, meet the poverty threshold or 16.7% of all children under 18. If you include the ages of 18-64, you add another 29.4 million people or 15% of that population. There are 6.6 million adults over 64 living in poverty. The total is 48.4 million people.

Because of all the rhetoric on immigration, 38.3 million of those people are native born American citizens, 3.4 million have been naturalized and 6.5 million are not a citizen. Racially, about 20.9 million are white (not Hispanic), 9.7 million are black, 3 million are Asian, and 14.1 million are Hispanic/Latina/other Hispanic.

Numbers. Why I felt the need to leave these numbers here as a little scrich I don’t know. I still don’t know why this image came to mind. Maybe the mist trying to hide the mountains is a reminder that the sun will warm and reveal the mountains. Then again, maybe that’s just a little hobbit’s hope.

When Jesus said “suffer the little children to come to me” I don’t think this was the suffering he meant. A few chapters later he said, “I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ “Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’

Numbers. Living human beings. And I still do not know how to write my lecture. Will leave the quandary here and wait for the sun.