What I learned today...that may seem stupid tomorrow

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

Unless he doesn't have access to the pond.

For the last couple of days some great learning facilitators from World Vision have been in DFW working with our team here on learning some of the basic foundations for our work in the US. Didn't know World Vision worked in the US? Check out more information here:

We all know the little ditty from above. But one of the things we've learned, is that teaching a man to fish has no value to him if he can't access the water where the fish are.

There is a natural progression to our growth in the area of biblical justice. First comes charity or relief, where we begin to learn about needs in the world and try to give to them. Maybe we begin to understand that we're stewards of our stuff and not owners. We give away the fish.

But then we realized that the people we gave to often became dependent on us, and on our charity. So we thought, let's develop some skill sets, let's teach them to fish. And so we did.

But where do they fish? What if the owner of the pond won't let them fish? How do we give them access? We advocate on their behalf, and teach them how to advocate for themselves.

Ultimately though, it's about that community owning the pond for themselves. How do they get there?

Each of these steps is a move toward biblical justice. None of them is having "arrived", but each of them leads us closer to what Jesus would have us do.