Can You Give Me a Hand?
A moving train of people helped our neighbor move from an upper floor to an apartment on the first floor. She merely posted in our residents’ Facebook group: “Many of you have offered to help me move. I am ready to accept help. SO…… if you have a wagon and can carry a couple medium boxes one way, meet at 3101 next Tuesday afternoon at 2 and we will have the best train to my apartment on the first floor. Thank you so much.” Twenty-four people signed up to help her. I loved her willingness to ask for help.
As an independent gal for over twelve years now, I like to call myself self-sufficient, self-supporting, self-reliant, self-sustaining. Even as I type those words, they sound very “self”-minded! I don’t even ask my children to help me move something to my garage. I just speak to myself and say: “YOU CAN DO THIS!”
I want to be others minded – NOT self-minded. Undoubtedly, I will relent from my self-reliance the more mature I get. We hold on to our independent mindset and become good at being self-sufficient. I’m guilty as charged.
Fortunately, there have been very few things that I couldn’t do myself, especially in this age of being able to google just about anything. DIY is my go-to and thank God for the internet that has been my bestie many times.
Self-sufficiency might be an admirable quality to strive for, but now I’m thinking I need to guard myself against becoming too good at it. Asking for help humbles us. Perhaps I need humbling – because this self-sufficiency almost crosses the line of being selfish in accepting the kindness of others and may even keep them from being blessed.
Perhaps, our self-sufficiency keeps us from an intimate, close relationship with our Lord Who is the ALL-Sufficient One. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
The All-Sufficiency of God means He is a God of the infinite riches of wisdom, goodness, and power. And His “all-sufficiency” is available to us as a treasure chest of blessings. That means we can let go of our self-sufficiency and receive the all-encompassing sufficiency of God.
Our Heavenly Father longs to have that close relationship with us. He wants us to ask Him for help. He wants to save us from a lot of the mistakes we’ll make without His wisdom. It’s easy to rely on our own strength, our own ability, and our own wisdom — so much so that we no longer reach out to our Father and let Him in to help us.
It’s easy to leave Him out of our daily life, decisions and activities, and only run to Him when there’s a big crisis. Even in the thick of our daily challenges and struggles, God is right there to place His gentle hand on our shoulder to say “Let Me help you with that!”