Good in Life's Repetition

Often it is easy to feel bogged down in the necessary repetition of tasks in life.

I heard a person mention this once and then say God created the sun to do the repeated task of coming up each day and how that's beautiful. It's at least an example of how repetition of a task is not bad, or how we're very grateful when others preform these daily tasks.

These repeated tasks or needs allow us to help others. Every single day we have a chance to help others by the daily, repeated tasks we do each day. We certainly know how to do them because we do them each day, so it makes it really easy to help others.

When we eat and sleep, we gain energy that may help others. When we cook, we may likely create a way to enjoy the gift of food with others.

When we go to work and find we do a similar thing every single day, we are helping the community that receives the product we help produce and we also have a chance to really help our coworkers in their work and feel loved by truly trying to do work well. We may be building trust by delivering what we promise the same time each week.

God wants us to love him and love our neighbor, and in loving our neighbor we honor him. Repeated tasks give us chances to honor him. And as we've noticed at times when we give to or help others, we sometimes have a sense of happiness or fulfillment when we do it.

6 Posts on Loving Others

Post by
Michelle Dowell, Contributor

The topic of loving others includes some of the most important things in life: family, friends, and evangelism. Here are six posts describing what loving others looks like:

1. Love Is Active. Love compels us to act.

2. Love for Others. "Love for others includes caring about what they care about."

3. How To Help a Friend in Need. I write about the best way to show love to others when they are in a time of need.

4. Love as the Apologetic. "One of the few truly interesting apologetics Christians have is love. Love in the Christian sense is interesting because it is so counter cultural to the world."

5. True Love is Unconditional. "True love is unconditional. Often we find in the world and church love which has a condition."

6. Liberty in the Christian Life. "... Love also does not insist on its own way. We might prefer certain things in the the church be this way or that way, but we cannot insist on preference or infringe upon the liberty of others because certain things displease us."

Watch for more posts on this topic in the future.

Respect and Helping Others

Often to really help others we must first take the attitude to respect them whatever they have to say.  I remember some time ago a conversation where I was able to help a grad student think through an issue that had puzzled for a decent amount of time.

The irony of the situation is that I was one of the last people who the student turned to.  She had asked many other people their opinions before me.  Why was I able to help?  Was I more qualified to answer the questions than others?

In fact I was far less qualified to answer the questions than the people she asked first.  But the reason the others failed was that they were quicker to judge others and thus less open to be trusted.  You see the student's theoretical questions were not really theoretical but practical based upon real life.

The whole point of the story is that quality ministry requires a non-judgmental spirit.  You see with Jesus' ministry that he often reached out to many people that others would not reach out to.

In an interesting sense Jesus often opposed many people that others would not.  I believe the difference is the sincerity of the asker of the questions.  You see the sincerity of all parties is important for dialogue.  Not all people who ask questions seek truth.

Action and Prayer

Prayer is a beautiful gift of God to man. God wishes for man to come into his presence to speak to him.

Not all prayer is beautiful. Sometimes prayer becomes an easy excuse in the church.

There is a problem and I will pray about it. My contribution to the problem is prayer.

You see this is often enough but sometimes as we pray we should be open to the fact that we may be part of the solution. Often the solutions to things our outside of us, but we need an openness to act.

Over time you will see there are many people who appear not open to act. They are often very open to pray, however.

Prayer and action need to be linked. Why would we pray for a solution if the solution is within our grasp?

Maybe the solution is not within our grasp but with prayer and thought maybe we can be part of the solution.

You see it is always important to desire to be part of the resolution to issues. If we have an ability to play a part than we should play a part.

Of course we should rest. We cannot minister 24/7 nor should we. Jesus rested and did not always minister.

You see many excuses that I am too tired. I am too mentally tired, or I am spiritually tired.

Sometimes it is true but often especially last two cases of being mentally or spiritually tired charitable work or good deeds of helping others often have an uplifting effect on the human psyche.

Sometimes I will feel in a terrible mood and that helping the world is the last thing I have energy to do. And then I do something to help and feel better.

You see my problem was that in thinking about myself too much I had turned inward and my mind became poisoned by my self-centeredness. When I looked to help the other I felt better because the issue was that I spent too much time thinking of myself.

It is not always the case but there is great joy in helping others. Even if our work involves helping others you see if we are paid we have received a reward for our work.

The reward of pay does not invalidate the goodness of what is done and we should do everything to the glory of God. But there is always something more uplifting about doing good when we receive no monetary incentive.