CHALLENGE:

Consider the needs around you. Pray about it.
There's room for group coordinators, general helpers,
intercessors, you name it!
Let's ask the Lord to continue teaching us this:
Love. At home and along the road.

"When we talk of materialism and simplicity, we must always begin with love for God and neighbour, otherwise we're operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness."

"Generosity is a virtue not just for those with a special spiritual gifting or an admirable philanthropic passion. It is at the very heart of our rebirth. Popular culture has taught us to believe that charity is a virtue. But for Christians, it is only what is expected. True generosity is measured not by how much we give away, but by how much we have left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbours. We have no right not to be charitable. The early Christians taught that charity is merely returning what we have stolen. In the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul said that when he gives bread to the beggers, he gets on his knees and asks forgiveness from them.

The early Christians used to write that when they did not have enough food for the hungry people at their door, the entire community would fast until everyone could share a meal together. What an incredible economy of love. The early Christians said that if a child starves while a Christian has extra food, then the Christian is guilty of murder. One of the fathers of the church, Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century, put it this way: "When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not - should not he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the detitute." Or in the words of Dorothy Day, "If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor."

From, The Irresistable Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, Shane Claiborne. pp 162, 164, 165.
See http://www.thesimpleway.org/shane/sampler.pdf for a chapter called "Another Way of Doing Life" from Shane's book.