Helping Hands

One of the most admired people on the planet has said the most important question is, "How can I help?"

It's a beautiful question and opens the doors of the heart in both the person asked and the person asking.  In today's troubled times we all know folks who could use a little help.  Maybe we all could use a little help from those around us. Sometimes it's just an encouraging word that is needed or an acknowledgement of a some one's personal struggle.  Sometimes it goes farther and someone needs help getting to the store to buy food or to the doctor to make an appointment when they're too sick to take themselves.  Sometimes people need help finding work in today's economy.

Maybe we even need to take the question a step farther and ask if we can meet a specific need in some body's life.  Maybe a single parent needs to be asked if they need help with the housework or the yard work.  Maybe our neighbor, and in the highest sense we are all neighbors, is having a struggle we can see and we can ask if we can help with that in particular.  We can, by taking this sort of action, really love our neighbor as we love our self.

One man I know even helped someone he knew disliked him move to a new house.  When the other man asked him, "What are you doing here helping me?  I always give you a hard time!"  He replied, "You asked for help.  So here I am.  Everyone needs an extra set of hands when moving."  It changed the way they related to one another.  My friend said it probably did him more good to help the guy than anything else he could have done.

Helping others does more than just meet a need for another person, it meets a deep need in us.  It connects us to each other in deep ways.  It takes us out of our own reality and lets us step into that other person's world in a way we might never see otherwise.  It can change our relationships with others, our relationship to the world and maybe our relationship with ourselves.

You might even say that it connects us to God in a way we might never otherwise experience.  After all, if we are all God's Kids, we might all be God's hands in this world, too.


 And isn't the answer to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"  "Yes!"

Just sayin'.