May I Help You?

Last Sunday PChad said something in his sermon along the lines of, "it's really hard to accept help." It really struck me then, & in the past few days I've been thinking about it more & more.

When people offer us help, out gut reaction is to say, "Oh no, I'm fine!" even if we are not. Kind of like when we are asked how we are doing, we automatically say "Good!" The funny thing is though that if we say we don't need help & then the offering party takes our answer at face value, we get all offended & declare, "No one even CARES that I might need help!" We suddenly seem to forget that we WERE offered assistance & turned it down saying that we were managing fine on our own.

Sometimes there are people who insist on helping despite our protests, but I wonder why we aren't more honest in the first place. Sure, sometimes people ask to be polite & they don't really want to take action, but just think of what might happen if we were more willing to accept offers of help!

If we started to answer honestly that we could really use a meal, or someone to watch the kids, or a ride somewhere, or just a visit, wouldn't that bond us together more? And if, when we offered to help someone, if they accepted graciously, wouldn't that make us feel helpful, useful, wanted as well? All these fellowship opportunities are being wasted, & we can't figure out why we don't know the people in our communities anymore.

It's high time we stopped being so insular & start reaching out to help & to be helped.