Matthew 26:10-11 — When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

There are verses in the Bible that are regularly misapplied. Sometimes those abuses are horrific. This one might be the one that irritates me most of all. There are people — “Christians” — who seem to think it’s a reason for not giving, an excuse for not being concerned about poverty!
What Jesus said was not meant as a prophesy of never-ending poverty, or as a sign of approval. It was a prophesy of His death.
Here’s a scripture that those mean-spirited Christians might do better to take to heart:

For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land. (Deuteronomy 15:11)

So that’s pretty self-righteous of me isn’t it? This ought to be the time when I explained how before I got saved I was really mean, and then my whole attitude changed. I wish that’s how it was. Honestly though, I still have my mean moments. If you catch me on a bad day — maybe one of those days when my job doesn’t feel quite secure — you might find it hard to get a gift from me, no matter how good the cause was that you wanted me to donate to.
I don’t suppose I’m unique though. In fact I think a lot of you reading this might be pretty much like me. And just like me, I suspect you have your good days too, even your moments of greatness — days when you really dig into your savings to move the kingdom forward a little. The thing is, Jesus said something else about how we should treat people with misfortunes:

Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was ahungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:41-46)

Misinterpreting the Bible, twisting it to mean-minded ends, was one of the things Jesus had against the “religious” of His day:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)

Are these small things — a little meanness, a little misinterpretation … I don’t think so!