Just One Story? The Pavement Bookworm

‘Books are a very important part of my life. Books are my wealth and pay my bills. Books have a magic that keeps me going through hard times.’

[Philani Dladla, The Pavement Bookworm, opening line]

Meet Philani Dladla.

You may have seen glimpses of his story that went viral a while back as a young man on a street corner selling book reviews to people. But yesterday morning i got to meet him.

Building bridges, digging holes

Just started reading a new chapter in Ron Sider’s ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ and this parable it begins with is such a brilliant example of the need for Christ followers to be involved in structural change that i wanted to jump on and share it before i read any further:

#ZumaMustFall: The jury is out…

So today was The Day of Reconciliation in South Africa and as long as you stayed off the comments sections of anyone posting anything about any of the marches it felt a little bit just like that.

This was my Facebook status at the beginning of the day:

Whose the Finance Minister is it anyways?

This morning i posted this:

Maybe Financeministergate was a sneaky ploy to unite the country cos I have not seen quite so much unity online for a long time…

…after one of the funnest thirty minutes i have spent on Facebook and the Twitterer in living memory [Except perhaps on Wednesdays at 1pm when i’m hosting SA’s premier Hashtagging game @AFrikkinHashtag of course].

To Prosperity add Justice

This will be the last share of the chapter from Ron Sider’s super-challenging book, ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ [do yourselves a favour and get hold of a copy and let it ruin you in the best of ways!]

We ended the last post with:

The threat of a curse always accompanied the promise of blessing

Prosperity as a Blessing from God

Continuing with a read through of this chapter from Ron Sider’s ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ starting where we left off:

Possessions are highly dangerous. They lead to a multitude of sins, including idolatry. Western Christians today desperately need to turn away from their covetous civilisation’s grasping materialism.

= = = = =

THE RING AND THE BELOVED

Possessions are dangerous. But they are not innately evil. Biblical revelation begins with creation. And created things, God said, are very very good (Genesis 1).

Tossing the Greedy out of the Church

As we continue to seek out A Carefree Attitude Towards Possessions through the lens of Ron Sider’s challenging book, ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’ let me go back a paragraph to remind us where we are and then continue with words i hope you will wrestle with and share with your friends:

= = = = =

Matthew, Mark and Luke all recall the terrible warning: “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!”(Luke 18.24, Mark 10.23, Matthew 19.23). The context of this saying shows why possessions are dangerous. Jesus spoke these words to His disciples immediately after the rich young man had decided to cling to his wealth rather than follow Jesus (Luke 18.18-23). Riches are dangerous because their seductive power very frequently persuades us to reject Jesus and His kingdom.