Giving and serving can sometimes be a difficult task. The frustrations can come from the feeling of being used or unappreciated. We give or do a task and the person isn’t very grateful or even worse, they feel entitled to the help you poured out. Yet one of our biggest calling is to be servants and to give with a cheerful heart.
My morning commute from Renton is a daily reminder that while we cannot always control the outcome of our giving and serving, we never know who we impact. Like the recovering alcoholic who without fail pulls out his recovery book and Bible every day, cheerfully encouraging everyone around him to live the best life they can. Or the driver (with hard task of dealing with difficult and unruly passengers) who yells in a loud voice to the students getting off at the station to “study hard, stay in school and get good grades”.
Yesterday an elderly man had fallen at the bottom of the escalators in the train station while another man was struggling to help him up. Most of us were either pausing for a bit or going to the stairs and heading out for the day. Mental excuses were rotating in my mind – I don’t have a medical background, I can’t leave my work laptop unattended, how late will I be to work, is he drunk/high or is he sincerely hurt (?). Then out of the rushing crowd, out steps a young lady without hesitating, puts down her backpack, gently scoops up the man’s other arm and whispers something to encourage him to get up. I replay that moment and think how God asks us to not hesitate in pouring out our help. Of course when we have the resources or the time available, the giving can at times be fairly simple and easy. But there will be other times when we seemingly can’t help or it takes a lot out of us emotionally. This is where we are called to put down our “backpacks” and just offer ourselves to the aid of another.
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Awesome article. Great.