Looking beyond ourselves

Isn't it funny how you can be in a fuming bad mood and then someone needs your help with something, and in helping them, you forget why you were angry?

I was frustrated over a simple thing and I was writing about it in a different blog that I keep for such entries that no one else needs to read... When I was approached by a sweet, quiet tempered Asian man who couldn't speak English very well.

He was having difficulties writing a paper to explain to policemen why his license plate lights wouldn't work. Apparently, it's actually a problem with the car it's self. He had an impressive document of research he had done to prove that what he said was true. There were problems in the making of this particular car, and he had tried to get it fixed several times, but it never worked.

He needed my help to word letter of explanation. Some policemen didn't understand when he gave it to them, that he needed it back. He said that he has had to print out this same document several times, and now he needed help to word it in such a way that they would understand that this was a document he was going to KEEP in his car, to prove to the policeman, that the lights were not his fault.

He was so sweet, and halting in his speech, that I came back from helping him, to my own document of pent up frustrations, only to realize that the frustrations were gone. I now see that the thing I was so upset about was really very silly and easily fixable with time. I just need to be patient and not worry so much, I guess.

I just think that it's so neat how the Lord uses the needs of others, to meet the needs in OUR lives... I was really just being selfish, and I needed to look beyond my own problems, and actively help somebody else.

I know, helping to word a document isn't that big of a deal, but that was all it took. Like drinking water will always quench your thirst faster than tea or koolaid, this also was surprisingly very simple; something I know I already knew, but in the heat of the moment, I forgot.

God always gives us a way of escape... Even when the temptation is something so seemingly trivial as a pity party that no one else will see. And that "way of escape" was more like a rescue, actually... There are probably 30 people in this library, why did he come to me? and why was his need such that I would have to get up and physically leave the spot where I sat simmering, to go and cool off thinking about helping him with something else.

Maybe that wouldn't have been any ordinary pity party, and actually would have slipped deeper inside my thoughts and become a barrier between me and any person who tried to talk about it? I don't know... I only know that if God sees all sin on the same level, and self pity and selfishness are just as bad as smoking or immorality, than I needed to be rescued.