Helping

We occasionally get feel good stories about someone helping out someone else in need. They are generally presented as an anomaly of society, something unusual and unique.

What if we looked at the stories through a slightly different lens, through the lens of obedience and love for our neighbor. The lens of good stewardship. To me that gives an entirely different viewpoint. If we believe that what we have is entrusted to us to enable us to help others, then our very Westernized individualistic view takes a bit of a hit.

In I Chronicles 12 we read of Israel coming together to make David king over all the tribes. Listed out in this chapter are the numbers of fighting men from each tribe who joined David at Hebron. The family of each warrior sent food and drink for the three days.

AND three of the tribes also “came bringing food on donkeys, camels, mules and oxen. There were plentiful supplies of flour, fig cakes, raisin cakes, wine, olive oil, cattle and sheep, for there was joy in Israel.” (I Chronicles 12:40b) It seems to me it would have been very easy to think that David had lots of resources, after all it’s an army. But reality was, armies were paid with plunder. This was not a raid or a battle. So what was sent fulfilled a very real peacetime need.

What I think about in this story however, is the prompting which people heeded. They anticipated a need and LOADED A CAMEL! They didn’t just order a box of cookies from Amazon. They generously took from their own supplies to meet a need. They stewarded what they had been entrusted.

The challenge for me is not helping but helping in a way that stewards well what I have been entrusted. It’s very easy to give at the margins, or to believe someone else, be it government, the wealthy, the churches, should take care of a situation. Think about the guy who loads up his truck and drives a thousand miles to grill and cook for people doing relief work after a disaster. That guy (figuratively) loaded a camel.

It might be far away or it might be next door, but someone needs me to load a camel. Open my eyes Lord.