Every time I hear that Myanmar is barring aid workers, denying visas, and making it hard for anyone to enter the country to help the cyclone victims, I want to spit. And spit again. A few days ago, one of our 150 Conversation Starters was, “Why are people poor?”

When it came to me, I told the children how sometimes people are poor because governments are unjust and sometimes just plain evil. This is one of those instances. Same in the Sudan. It outrages me. What is it about people who make their way into the echelons of government and then forget completely why they are there? How can they look themselves in the mirror, living well, while their countrymen are dying? I do not understand.

Evil regimes will someday pay. Maybe not now (though I wish it so). God is a just God who punishes those who not only forget the poor, but is particularly judicious when it comes to people who exploit the poor.

If you’d like to give to help the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar, here’s a place.

“He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker but he who is gracious to the needy honors Him,” says Proverbs 14:31.