You're helping someone out by paying to fill up their car. As they start to roll away from the pump POP. If they had money, you wouldn't be filling their tank. Do you wish them luck and go on your merry way? Of course not. Now you're paying to fix their tire.
Or you helped someone file their taxes. Turns out you made a little typo. And they're getting audited.
Or maybe someone suggests your Bible study group clean the house of an older church member who's been ill. You arrive and realize that no one has cleaned that house for a long, long time. Do you turn around and leave? No, not unless you're going to the store for more bleach. Lots of bleach.
Sometimes helping someone turns out to be far more costly, time consuming, or just ... hard than you'd expected. Once you're in, you know you can't walk away.
That's when it's tempting to have your own little pity party. "Woe is me. Why did I get myself into this? No good deed goes unpunished. Why doesn't God keep these things from happening when I was trying to help?"
Couldn't God have kept them from getting a flat tire? Couldn't he have kept the government from selecting their return? Couldn't God move some rich church member to send in a professional cleaning crew with industrial disinfectants ... or napalm?
But he doesn't do that. Instead he seems to want us to get down into the muck with people. He seems to want it to hurt a little to help.
It's almost like he wants us to experience a little of what Jesus went through. Helping can be costly, but it rarely costs us everything. God wants us to be obediant, but he usually doesn't expect us to be "obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Phil 2:8).
So "consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart" (Heb 12:3).
And you might want to burn those clothes after you finish cleaning that house.
Image via Pixabay
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