Each has something to offer ...

I think I am finally beginning to come out of a certain kind of tiredness that had me worried. Usually I am excited about things...especially new ideas. The past few years I have had more trouble feeling motivated to do much of anything. Goal setting had become scary because I immediately felt like I just couldn't go there ... the chances of not following through were just too great.

This past 2 1/2 very fast weeks have been a complete departure from my norm. I have had much less stimulation and much less of the feeling like there were many plates to keep spinning. We have 1 week left at the CHI International Training Center in Herborn, Germany, and I am going to miss it (and Jos and Sylvia, Soren, Annette, and our Dutch friends Willianne, Linda, and Martsen.

My buddies out there will recognize my statements through the years about how we should all be living together because it seems so silly that we are all so stressed out, trying to meet the demands of daily life ... keeping up a house, cooking, shopping, paying bills. It all seems so redundant. This experience is the closest I have come to getting that wish and I have enjoyed it.

Today, I have a new spring in my step I haven't felt in awhile. Today, we are in class over 9 hours by the time we hit the sack. That is exhausting, but it is a good exhausting.

A concept hit me today. It is something I have thought about in the past, but not the same way. It came out of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. Everyone knows the account. Jesus was on his way to Galilee and stopped at a well in the heat of the day to rest. He asked a Samaritan woman for water. She questioned why he was talking to her at all, gave him a drink, and learned He was the Messiah. She went to tell her village who also came to meet Christ Jesus.

Both at home and with Christ's Hope, my live is about to 'help' those who need it. But, in light of the enormous-to-the-millionth-power problems in the world, it often seems futile. Of course, we know that individuals are worth the trouble of stepping out and doing what we can. Also, as believers, we feel called and actually commanded to be the hands and feet of the One we know to be the Savior, who saved us and who wants us to take the message we have received to 'the nations.'

Today, though, I was shown something different and so touching and deeply meaningful to me. The Messiah asked the Samaritan woman for something. He could have gotten it himself; but, he showed her that she had something important to offer, regardless of her situation, past, circumstances, problems, sins, etc.

I am encouraged by this. I have something to offer. On the other hand, knowing that I have something to offer is not usually my problem. My problem is in getting past my own agenda in my 'helping' to see what others have to offer.

When I worked with single parents on welfare who were full time college students, I wanted to find ways to encourage these people who often were given a lot of free help in school, with books, with food stamps, etc.. to help others. I wanted their children to see themselves as powerful in the world and not victims. I wasn't really all that successful. The stressors on these people are HUGE! Coordination of efforts on my part was thwarted by the realities. It was always on my mind, though.

I want to become skilled at "Pearl Diving" for those opportunities to ask people to pitch in, to feel what I feel when helping others and exercising skills and talents. I want each adult, teen, and child that I come into contact with to come into contact with the Messiah at the well who asks him or her for something.

Every one of us has something to offer the Messiah. I used to say we can each do something to make the world better. I think God is taking me deeper into the meaning of what I sensed and longed for all my life as it just doesn't make sense to me to live a life without service to others at the center. That sounds a bit pious -- no comments from the Peanut Gallery (-: