Just give me my marching orders
… Aaron and his sons shall go in and assign to each of them his task and what he must carry; Numbers 14:19 (NABRE)
By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.
All this month I have been encumbered with decisions about how I would arrange my time with helping others.
We can find ourselves caught up and lost in the moments of doing what we think is a great thing, when in reality we have just made a quagmire out of a rose garden.
How many times have we, men in particular, had to redo a job after completing it only to realize that we either put something together backwards or left out a major piece?
That’s easy to remedy when you are working with tangible objects. However addressing life changing incidents can be as delicate as separating the egg yolk from the whites-if you don’t know what you are doing.
It may look easy and things often do, but when you get a piece of eggshell where you don’t want it could present a difficult task to remove without knowing the proper techniques.
Again those are eggshells, non-living things; yet life altering moments and how to respond correctly can be as elusive as snow snakes.
Even though we mean well and may have the best intensions, without proper guidance we are setting up an opportunity for lives and relationships to be ruined.
Just like the instructions labeled on clothes for proper cleaning – you wouldn’t wash your mink stole in your home washer would you? Or would you use a straightening comb on your weave? I didn’t think so.
I’ve learned a few things about interacting with people who are experiencing moments of separations that snatch them from reality into the reality of “it can happen to you.”
You learn a lot from what is real and what is make believe when you are trying to comfort someone who is bereaved, homeless, addicted to drugs/alcohol and trying to live with diseases that have stigmas attached to them other than death.
We KNOW that some of these life consuming battles are self-imposed; never-the-less because we feel and see the agony we want to help (for those who truly do). Therefore we dive right in head first, not realizing the depth of waters in which people are treading. We risk the chance of doing bodily harm to them and to ourselves.
I’ve heard several stories of people drowning, knowing fully well they cannot swim yet the overwhelming urge to save another consumes their total being so they jump right in.
Now when we make a decision to help, shouldn’t this thought process include guidance from a reliable source with a strategy?
Life is precious and when we make an honest effort to influence it, we need to be well assured that we have concerted more than one possible outcome and to insure that the outcome is the best one possible for the situation.
How then can we begin the process of identifying what steps should be taken place?
- We address the situation ASAP (Always Say A Prayer)
- We then consult the BIBLE (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)
- Then we PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens)
We do understand that faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. No matter how we may wish that things change there has to be something done: For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. James 2:26
Lord teach us to obey Your Word that it will show in our assigned service commanded by You.
WHEN GOD GIVES US OUR MARCHING ORDERS THE MISSION HAS BEEN ASSIGNED
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