Week of February 21, 2010

  • Pastor Duane Cross
  • Feb 22, 2010

THE MINISTY OF HELPFULNESS

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic book Life Together, describes the ministry of helpfulness.

“The second service that one should perform for another in a Christian community is that of active helpfulness.  This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters.  There is a multitude of these things wherever people live together.  Nobody is too good for the meanest service.  One who worries about the loss of time that such petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of his own career too solemnly.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.  God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.  We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, as the priest passed by the man who had fallen among thieves, perhaps—reading the Bible.  When we do that we pass by the visible sign of the Cross raised athwart our path to show us that, not our way, but God’s way must be done.  It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them.  They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are disdaining God’s “crooked yet straight path” (Gottfried Arnold).  They do not want a life that is crossed and balked.  But it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.

In the monastery his vow of obedience to the abbot deprives the monk of the right to dispose of his own time.  In evangelical community life, free service to one’s brother takes the place of the vow.  Only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of God’s love and mercy.”

May you experience the blessing and ministry of helpfulness.

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Pastor Duane

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