When I was around 14 years old, my younger sister and I were heading with my friend and her father to her high-rise flat in Kilburn. When we got to the main entrance we saw a pool of blood on the floor. "I wonder what happened there?" Her father said in his strong Scottish accent. We started to get more concerned after seeing more blood in the lift. My heart was pounding as we got out of the lift and saw the trail of blood leading right to the door of my friend's apartment. As I had my younger sister with me, my friend and her father asked us to wait outside their door while they went inside to see what had happened. My friend came out a few minutes later, white as a ghost and told us that her mum had been attacked. Apparently some boys had mugged her mother brutally injuring her in the process. There was only a small amount of money in her bag and she hadn't resisted so nobody could understand why they had harmed her.
Prior to that incident I had met boys in the area who had been arrested for mugging ladies. Concerned that they might do something like that again I tried to dissuade them from that kind of activity. "How would you feel if someone did something like that to your mother?" I had asked. They went on to tell me people who rob ladies normally target rich people so it's unlikely that anything like that would happen to their mothers. My friend's mother is from Columbia and is of mixed heritage so I suspect her attackers assumed that she had a lot of money because of her appearance. She is a sweet, harmless lady who is less than 5 feet tall so I am baffled as to why they injured her so badly.
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| Timothy 6:10 |
Money in itself isn't evil but the love of money definitely is. The barbaric way in which my friend's mother was attacked makes me believe that her attackers were driven by an evil desire for wealth. Their lust for money hardened their hearts making them cold-blooded and merciless. When mentoring people from impoverished backgrounds we need to stop them from idolizing money by helping them to focus on spiritual values instead. We need to help them to understand that who they are inside is more important than what they possess. There are numerous wealthy individuals who have committed suicide making it clear that money doesn't guarantee happiness.
