Love and joy and peace are almost essential qualities and characteristics when it comes to serving and ministering to those who are really poor.We need the love of God bubbling up within us to provide us the motivation and inspiration and also compassion necessary to keep on serving when it becomes hard and demanding and challenging.Joy is seen in the eyes of these to whom we give something that will relieve the pain and poverty around around them and that visible joy can cause a spring of joy to seem in your heart almost simultaneously. It will always be joy to behold joy in someone else's sore life.Then, there is peace. Many people are marching for peace and writing about peace and struggling and even fighting for peace, but real peace is part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit of God. That's just a fact.There is a peace that can come from knowing deep within that Almighty God is in control of this world, even though we have been confronting the suffering all over.Those, in the slums of Kampala in Uganda, and in Mathere in Nairobi, whose hearts are filled with the love of God and whose faith is strong, understand that deep peace which passes all understanding.When one has a worldwide perspective there's an ability to start to see the broader picture and to perceive just what is going on and going to happen behind all that is visible at first glance. It is wonderful to understand this whole aspect.These dear people in Uganda and Kenya whom I have had the fantastic privilege of meeting, have a sense of patience which is remarkable. They are aware of the corruption going on throughout them, but they may also be aware of individuals who care doing what they are able to to greatly help and assist and encourage.Poverty and hunger and conflict and persecution enable some people to understand what others might never understand.Hardship brings about amazing harvests sometimes and when those who are experiencing this share their story, it is heart rending and heart warming.Kindness and goodness may be considered by some to be rather old fashioned but to those that look for a helping hand kindness and goodness could be the very thing they need to see them through another month.Another word which is is so precious to those who are really poor is faithfulness and faithfulness in the west is really a scarce commodity, especially in the realm of marriage.Cultivate faithfulness and kindness and goodness and donate to someone else's harvest. Inside a very short period you'll reap the rich reward which only our gracious God can provide and impart.Sandy Shaw.Sandy Shaw is Pastor of Nairn Christian Fellowship, Chaplain at Inverness Prison, and Nairn Academy, and serves on The Children's Panel in Scotland. He's got travelled extensively over these past years teaching, in the us, Canada, South Africa, Australia, 12 visits to Israel, and most recently in Uganda and Kenya.He broadcasts regularly on WSHO radio out of New Orleans, writes a weekly commentary at http://www.studylight.org entitled "Word from Scotland", in addition to a weekly newspaper column.His M.A. and B.D. degrees are from The University of Edinburgh, and he continues to run and exercise regularly. Sandy Shaw.