Pursing Perspective

We all have those days when we seem to be pushed to our limits. 

Those days when we are frustrated, exhausted and at our wits end. 

There are the days when we feel like ripping our hair out because that would somehow make it all easier. 

But what I have discovered in the last two weeks is that no matter how hard my life gets I have been blessed with so many opportunities.

 I have been working with the outreach organization NightShift and as I walk the street, cold even in all of my layers all I can feel is grateful. I am forced to forget all of the tedious worries of my day and just take the time to bless someone else in any way I can, even if it is a simple as a cup of hot chocolate, half a muffin, and an open heart.

            I don’t think you can truly experience how privileged you are until you answer the call of service, because it is only when you are encompassed by true hardship you don’t realize what it is. Until you have the ability to listen to the stories people tell and witness how empty their lives are you can’t see how the three midterms you have that week are not really important in the scope of life. 

There are so many things the people on the street deal with that are so much worse than anything I could even imagine. One girl we talked to had been on the streets for a few years and was sober 6 months and counting. She had just had a baby boy. Her third. She is twenty. She also just found out that she has a rare disease that she passed along to her middle child. 

And she feels responsible.

 I could never imagine having to bear that burden, let alone at the age of twenty. And she does it all from the streets. Luckily she does not do it alone and she has her boyfriend’s help, but you could tell she was searching for something.

 You could tell she was searching for God. 

We asked her if we could pray with her, over her, and I was shocked to see how willing and how desiring she was for the hand of God. And it was in that moment that I knew that I couldn’t let anything stop me from coming back to pray for Kate, or any of the other “street friends” as they are so called. No assignment or workload could be important enough for me to miss the chance to bless some one else the way that God has blessed me.

            I think that in our busiest moments, amidst the chaos in our lives we need to volunteer ourselves more than ever, because when we bless someone else, God always seems to bless us in return. And when we bless someone else, when we shift our focus off of ourselves, if even for only a few hours, our stress melts away. It becomes just our new friend, the Lord, and us and that is the way He intended it to be.