The one thing I did that made my life harder than I ever thought possible also made it the most rewarding: It was a prayer that I made several years ago.
“Lord, If someone is on their knees, begging for you to help them, send me. If they have no one left and finally are turning to you to save them, send me. When they are at their end and don’t know if they can go on, send me.
Lord, send me to do YOUR work. Please do YOUR work through my hands.”
This isn’t a cute meme or a touching thought to share. This is actually what I prayed and I never realized JUST how difficult it would make my life. I have been there when people were dying in a car accident, when people were overdosing, when people didn’t know where they would sleep that night. When I see these things, I will get a tap (sometimes a smack) on the back of my head and God saying GO NOW, or DO NOW.
Oftentimes I make certain to tell the person not to thank me but to give thanks to God. Sometimes I fail to give Him credit.
If you take anything away from this, please do NOT say how nice I am or other BS. I’m not. It is not “loving” of me to do this. It is loving of HIM. When a craftsman builds something beautiful, you don’t say, “Wow, what a great hammer,” you say, “Wow, what a great artist!” I am just a tool, one of MANY in HIS toolbox. If you take anything from this, take this: Be a tool. Allow HIM to use you to affect a positive change for someone else. AND if you are at the end of your rope, PRAY! Then keep your eye out for the people that HE will send to do HIS work. Then, thank HIM and praise HIM.
5 replies on “Truth:”
Thank God for people like you and Grace. Both of you are shining examples of what it means to love and honor God. You inspire me.
I wish I could take credit but I can’t. I am not a virtuous person. I hang out with people that polite society steers clear of, mostly strippers and the like. I try to give hope to some of them but I am far from altruistic. I know that the vast majority of them are just trying to put food on their kids’ plates and a roof over their heads. I always tell them that I don’t judge. That isn’t my job. I am told only to love my God with all my heart, soul, and mind. And to love my neighbor as myself. I love God but I fail him constantly. If you are inspired, don’t be inspired by me. Be inspired by HIM and how he can love someone even as broken as myself and can use me to help others.
It’s not virtue… it’s not personal morality.
It’s caring about our neighbor, listening (however we chose to describe it) to God’s voice.
Who is our neighbor? As Jesus puts it, it’s whomever we encounter in our daily lives. Sometimes we go out of our way to encounter them, sometimes they come to us asking us to care. (I’ve seen it both ways.)
We are not trying to do ‘good’ to be virtuous, to earn God’s approval, (as ‘virtue signaling’ is trying to show our ‘virtue’ to get other’s approval. We are trying to do ‘good’ (as we see it in our own lives) by showing God’s love to others (caring for them), because we acknowledge how much God has loved us…
Curious… how do you ‘hear’ God’s voice, saying ‘Go!’?
I haven’t really ever said the prayer, use me God, send me, but when I see an opportunity to help (nothing as drastic as the situations you describe), I try not to begrudge the sacrifice of my time, treasure and empathy.
I am thinking of one (or more…) person in particular, a type of person, a single – widowed, divorced, etc – woman in some sort of trouble: financial, health, emotional. I can be their shoulder to lean on, cry on. I am the face of God to them, the God who loves them just as much as He loves me.
It isn’t an auditory sensation as much as it is a twinge. It’s a feeling in the base of my skull, almost like a pop and tingle. I jokingly tell people that it is God smacking me on the back of the head but it is kind of like that. When I feel it, I just know that God is saying Go, or Do. It is followed by a sense of urgency. It’s hard to really put it into words.