She sits on the icy steps, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, her cheekbones chiselled and her lips blue with cold. On the pavement before her is a plastic bag open containing a few notes. People say she gathers money for her alcoholic grandson who buys vodka to warm his body and dull his mind.

Further down the road a drunkard lies crumpled on the ground, a tattered mess of ripped clothes and dirt. At the bus stop near our home, a woman regularly waits. Shuffling in her inadequate shoes, she moves her head this way and that mouthing words no one hears. Hidden behind a layer of grime her face is dark and her hair a single clump of grease. She is used and cast aside without love.

Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us.” And it’s true. In this city they are evident. Broken people from broken families. People who’ve drifted into crime, or slid into alcoholism, squandering all that they are until, trapped, they are left with nothing the world values. Or those who, through no fault of their own, have lost control of their lives. Brokenness and poverty are all around us.

Jesus’ heart was full of compassion towards the poor and broken and it the same for us too. My heart is moved by poverty, moved by injustice. I preach the good news to the poor and seek to help them but there’s a look in their eyes that I recognise.

Before I belonged to Christ I stood where some of them stand today – with despair in my heart, aware that I possessed nothing of real value and had absolutely no power to save myself. That look took me to Christ and kept me completely reliant on His lifesaving power.

But today, outwardly respectable and involved in God’s work, poverty lurks close to my heart. I know the so-called qualities a Christian should exemplify and therein lies the danger. I could try harder. Seeking to change myself, I could determine to live a more virtuous life and could give all that I have to the poor. And so, the list goes on. I could do a lot more.

But I remind myself – the gospel only comes to me when I know that I have no merit and no power. Still, I must rely entirely on the power and salvation of Jesus Christ. The gospel is not religion. It is the outworking of my life unconditionally surrendered to Him and, this is where the rubber hits the road, its characterised by me truly allowing him to be Lord of every area of my life.

I walked past the woman with her plastic bag on the pavement yesterday. And the discarded lady still stands at the bus stop. These people are part of my world, challenging me to kept surrendering my life to God; to be content with all that I have and yet to give generously.