When We Get Busy Helping, So Does God!

My Mom was the “go to” person in our family. She seemed always to be reaching out to someone in need. Suggesting that she start saying “no" once in a while, I received this response: “When you’re busy helping others, God is busy helping you.” My Mother followed strongly, God’s greatest commandments “to love God and love her neighbors."   For my mother it was quite simple: When we reach out to another on God’s behalf, God reaches out to us.  

What great wisdom my mother had! God is more about asking us for favors, than He is about testing us or ordering us around. Why? Think of how many ask God everyday for help. And if God had our hands, our feet and our hearts, look how much more can get accomplished and so much faster too. No wonder God rewards us by helping us with His tender, loving and merciful care. He is continuously grateful for our support.

To make this work we have to be alert, look people in the eye, and listen to what they are sharing. However, and what is more important is that we listen more attentively to what they are not saying. Once we hear what they need, then we have to make that big choice “to reach out and love them.” Which simply means “get busy and help them!" And when we do, God, in gratitude looks at what we need and “gets busy and helps us.”

This is how our great partnership with God works. This is what God desired when He created the Garden of Eden, and Jesus, when He was preaching the kingdom. Where do we do this? We can “get busy" wherever we are in our community, in our home, on the bus, shopping with a friend or visiting a lonely neighbor. As soon as we make our move, God “gets busy” too.

This is discipleship, this is evangelization, this is being grateful to God for his many blessings. And the best part of all, it makes God's day. During her lifetime, my mother was only fulfilling her partnership with God. Today each of us is invited to fulfill ours! God is ready to help us, are we ready to help God?

When we reach out to another on God’s behalf, God reaches out to us.