To Be Rescued or Ask for Help?

Give them fish or teach them to fish

Send them food or give them a garden to grow their own food.

Rescue them or help them.

Aid and food supplies are being poured into Africa yet there is more people starving than ever before. Mike posted here on how 30,000 children a day are dying of starvation. Children in North American go to school hungery yet we have abundant supplies of food. The number of homeless on the streets continues to rise and new home starts are up. Governments boast of low unemployment rates yet the cost of welfare is enormous.

A poverty of soul – is that just spiritual or could it be that living in the victim role leaves our emotions, our body and our mind always in want?

I am not looking at this as a judgment of others but as holding open a piece of my own soul that has resided in this ghetto for too long – waiting to be rescued and not asking for help. As I begin to tell my own story and carry it out of the storage cellar of my soul and bring it into the garden of life I am also finding the desert garden of solitude. Solitude gives life, which we can that to community. Being rescued or helped; both are a posture of supplication, holding out of the hands, pleading with the eyes of the soul, of asking for change. One asks you to take me out of this life, fill the empty spaces and with your prayers, your work, make my world perfect. I simply can step out of my old life and into the new. This is the plea to be rescued. The other request is for help. I know I want changes, empty places filled, lies removed and truth brought in, new vision, new thought patterns and more vibrant life. I am asking if you would be willing to walk that road with me. I must choose those changes, and choose the resources that move me in a healing direction, knowing time is necessary for them to become life patterns. Asking for help, as I see it, means one is willing to take responsibility for action while asking others to walk beside you. Asking to be rescued means relieving yourself of the responsibility required while expecting others provide the solutions for you.

There are a number of “make over” programs on TV right now. One year after that make over what life patterns will have changed for these people? Bruce Wilkerson was speaking about living in Africa. He realized that handing out food didn’t solve the picture of emaciated people, but it did sooth the consciences of those living miles away. The immune system of the starving is so low that they cannot absorb the necessary nutrition from the food delivered. When they eat spinach and cabbage and rebuild their immune system, then they can start to eat the foods such as rice and beans that are delivered. His team planted 10,0000 vegetable gardens where the people tended their own garden and provided their own food, allowing them to be self-sustaining. Instead of rescuing, they are helping because they are giving responsibility while walking beside them.

Jesus is in the business of rescuing because he has the ability to fill the empty spaces. I believe he also waits until we choose to ask for help before he does that. He never invades our space. He waits for our invitation because he honours our journey. So then I wonder if my prayer is to be rescued or plea for help? Am I willing to take responsibility for the change by accessing resources? To be rescued I will seek community only for what I can get. Asking for help I seek community to give, to be able to walk beside others in their brokenness, gain courage and give courage. Trusting the presence of God within makes asking for help a way of entering into community.

The romanticized version of life looks for the “white knight” that rescues me. I don’t believe in white knights and I no longer want to be rescued. I do believe in the Lover of my soul and I am asking for help as I live life in the Light and Truth and authentic relationship with the Giver of Life.