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“Helping Others is Inconvenient So Just Ignore Them”
by brian rushing

Once again, a year has blown by us in a hurry, and we find ourselves about to celebrate two of our favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thanksgiving might could be explained as the holiday of stuffing your face until you are about to pop (and then waiting awhile and stuffing it some more); and…
Christmas as the holiday of faking good behavior so Santa will give you gifts. (Or when you have gotten a bit too old for Santa, switching it to the holiday of using Santa to threaten others into fake good behavior!)

So (tongue-in-cheek) we might could call these two holidays our celebration of the sins of gluttony and deceit!

Just kidding… We know that this is not what these holidays are all about, but too often, we seem to head down a path that doesn’t embrace a truly thankful, giving spirit that these two holidays should point us toward. Too often we find ourselves with bad attitudes (and maybe even behavior) during this time of the year. We find ourselves with hurried attitudes similar to two of the people in Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan: the priest and the Levite.

These two men should have provided kindness and mercy to the man in need, but they both failed to do so – perhaps because it was too inconvenient to do so in the busyness of their day.

J. I. Packer says: “It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians — I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians — go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians — alas, they are many — whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.
…The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need.”

These words from Packer hit me pretty hard, as I consider my own behavior during this holiday season. I don’t like doing things that are inconvenient to me. And Helping Others is Usually Inconvenient! But that doesn’t give me (or any Christian) the right to Just Ignore Them.

And what I discover is that I am so busy with my plans, that anything “extra” that comes along during a day is pretty inconvenient – just like the beaten man was for the priest and Levite. Will I be willing to “spend and be spent” to enrich the lives of those who aren’t my friends and family this December? What will I do this holiday season to move away from the attitude of the “Christian snob” and live more like Jesus who gave His time, care, and concern to do good to others – even when it was inconvenient for Him? God, change my heart, change my attitude, change my behavior. Help me to “slow down” and stop feeling inconvenienced by others, and instead to realize that I have an opportunity to speak to others about You in each unexpected encounter.

(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)

So Facebook and social media are presently filled with people pouring ice cold water on themselves and asking others to do the same – all in the name of charity… “Pour cold water on yourself to serve others.” Sadly, we are finding out that several people may have died from the challenge, and warnings are popping up asking people to “not rise to the challenge.” So maybe it is time to take a different twist on it and engage in the “cold water challenge” that Jesus provided… “Give a cup of cold water to someone else to serve them with hospitality.”

As I mentioned in my previous post, to give someone a cup of cold water in Jesus’ day required effort – it meant doing a little extra to serve someone else through your hospitality. It meant more than just taking care of their thirst by pouring them a glass of room-temperature water from the water urn. Instead, it meant taking another trip to the well or the stream to get a fresh cup of cold water.

But another aspect regarding this idea of a cup of cold water is that anyone could provide this cold water to someone else. It didn’t require wealth. It only required effort. A cup of cold water was a blessing that even the poorest person could give to another. It would simply take the effort of going to the well and drawing the water.

This helps to teach us that kindnesses and hospitality are valued in Christ’s kingdom, not according to the cost of the gift, but according to the love and affection of the giver. This takes us back to the idea that God desires mercy & compassion for others to exist in us more than He wants us bringing an offering to the altar.

So the idea is that if you are truly full of the grace of God, you can also be truly rich in good works, even if you are poor according to the world’s standards. God desires us to sacrifice our own desires to care for others, and no matter who we are we have the ability to provide care for others. And we are to do it with the right heart.

So take Jesus’ “Cold Water Challenge” today and richly serve someone else.

How have you seen people show hospitality to others without having to use the world’s “wealth” to do so?

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