"Can reaching out to help others help me to have joy?"

Today's Precious Prodigal post is at = http://bit.ly/1pcTwHd Can reaching out to help others help me to have joy? #reachout #helpothers Like what you see? Please "Like" us on Facebook and "Share"

Galatians 6:2 “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

I was working with some women from a halfway house, helping them to transition into the “real world.” Most of them had lost everything…home, job, family, dignity…and they were suffering. It didn’t hurt less because they had caused it. If anything, that fact alone made it hurt more.

Now it was Thanksgiving, and I’ve never seen a group of women more discouraged. They were clean and sober and had been doing the right thing to the best of their ability for several months. But they were still in dead-end jobs earning minimum wage, apart from their families, and living in a halfway house. That’s bad enough at any time, but during the Thanksgiving holiday? No wonder they were overwhelmed.

Frustrated at their negativity, I called a local church and found two families that needed help. Then, with a confidence I was far from feeling, I announced to the girls that we were going to provide Thanksgiving dinner to those families. They took the two large boxes I gave them, and I waited to see what would happen.

Those girls had no extra money, and some of those cans of cranberry sauce were paid for with nickels here and dimes there from several of them. By the time we were ready to deliver the boxes, they were full and that was wonderful. But the change that came over the women as they slowly began to fill those boxes was astonishing.

They stopped complaining, they began to smile and even to laugh. And if I hadn’t set limits, 30 women would have had a caravan to deliver those boxes! Why? Because they had seen there is real joy in reaching outside our own pain to help others. If the prodigals can see things differently in their desperate circumstances and begin to grow, can we do less?

I know how much pain you’re in when you love a prodigal. I’m walking that wilderness path right beside you. And I know it isn’t easy to look outside our own pain and see that other people are hurting too. But they are, and some of them live in the same house with us.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve probably added to that pain with my seeming indifference and sometimes even with harsh words to my prodigal and others. And excusing myself by saying, “Hurting people hurt people” isn’t going to cut it. It isn’t about my hurting; it’s about being so selfish and self-involved that I can’t or won’t see that other people besides me are hurting. And if all I can focus on is my own pain, I shouldn’t wonder if I’m miserable.

There’s a better option. Like my girls from the halfway house, we can reach out past our own pain and make a difference. Whether it’s our family, a friend, or people we don’t even know, the biggest difference won’t be in the people we help but in ourselves. And it’s one of the ways we can keep our circumstances from stealing our joy.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, looked beyond our own pain and reached out to someone else who is hurting?