“I have nothing to wear,” she said in a very small voice. I started to laugh: wasn’t this what women always said? And then I saw the tears in her eyes. Silently I began to look over her wardrobe myself. Warm dresses. Serviceable ones—at least with Corrie’s meticulous mending they’d been made serviceable. But somehow the clothes she had salvaged from the refugee room had not managed to include anything pretty. Nothing feminine and happy.… And suddenly I saw that this was part of a whole pattern of poverty into which we had fallen, a dark, brooding, pinched attitude that hardly went with the
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I think this is a good point and one not made often enough for fear of sounding like we are proclaiming some sort of prosperity gospel. So called 'first-world problems' are trivial, especially when compared to the needs of the world (which Brother Andrew saw first-hand). Yet we exist in a socio-cultural-economic moment and must live accordingly, we do not need to adopt a first century lifestyle in food, dress and housing for the sake of the Gospel when this is not necessary.
