The truth of this saying was graphically illustrated by some boys who were playing in a field where they discovered an old railroad spur. Each youngster tried to walk the track, but each found that after a few steps they had to step down. Two youngsters were seen to be whispering together and then they announced to the group they could walk the entire length of the track without falling off. The other youngsters responded with a challenge, “Oh yeah, prove it!”
Whereupon the two lads got on opposite rails and reached across to hold hands. They each steadied the other, and they did together what neither of them could have done alone. Like the boys, if we extend our hand to help one another, we also will find our balance improves as well.
John tells us of an incident in the life of our Lord when Jesus found helping another was also beneficial to himself. “Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well.” He was waiting for his disciples to go into the city to buy food. While he waited he started talking to a woman who had come to draw water. Jesus became so involved in preaching to her that when his disciples returned with the groceries and said, “Master, eat,” he replied, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of” His weariness had left him as a result of his teaching the woman.
If this principle worked for the Master, it certainly will work for us. If we will only lose ourselves in service to others, we soon will forget about our own weariness and become invigorated doing the Lord’s work and caring for some of his other children. So the cure for our own weariness, the cure for boredom, the cure for self-pity is to look around to see who we can help by extending our hand across the rail.
We will be so intent on helping others that we forget about our own needs. Our point of view will be more balanced because it is not focused on self. As we get more involved with the needs of others, we will find that we also have meat to eat that others know not. For isn’t it also our mission in life as it was the Lord’s who said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work”? The satisfaction, even exhilaration, that Jesus felt is something we can feel also.
Jesus refused to do a miracle to feed himself when he had not eaten for 40 days yet he performed a miracle to feed 5,000 who were not nearly as hungry as he had been. Jesus is showing us how to put the needs of others ahead of ourselves.
It is sad this attitude is so rare today. Paul lamented to the Philippians, “/ hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”
Just whose interests are we looking out for? Timothy was different from everyone else. Are we also different from everyone else and care for the needs of others, or are we like those who are so busy looking after their own needs that they neglect others?
We had better learn right now to begin thinking of others, for the only picture we have of the judgment seat has to do with how we treated others who were hungry, sick and in prison. Again it was the Lord who told us, “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”
Let us take a genuine interest in others and extend our hand to help them along the way. By doing so we may “save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One