Civic Responsibility

Dont get tired of helping others. You will be rewarded when the time is right, if you dont give up. Galatians 6:9 The last few days I have been translating some of my fathers radio cassettes to digital. Eventually they will make it onto the internet and there are still the greater number to be processed but last night I resolved to share the day between writing and dads tapes so here goes my first attempt. I came across this verse a couple of weeks ago but didnt have a framework to put it in so; like a lot of us seem to do I made a note of it for later. As a young adult I followed in dads footsteps and joined a service club called Apex. It was the sort of thing that appealed as much as anything because of the physicality of the activity as well as the product; helping others. Problem was that Apex was time limited with an exit clause of 40 years of age and when I moved location I didnt step back into a new club. There was another for me to not find another group. It was that I did not find many like minded Apexians meaning I didnt find many who were Christian first and apex second. `Most of them were good guys who were civic minded : they were doing it to improve the civic amenity or the person life. It seems that the Church had a peculiarity then of drawing people into its circle and then keeping them insulated from the pain of human existence. Yet in the Letter to the Galatians Paul makes just this point it is an activity with reward to go about helping others. I dont think that Pauls reasoning was to help others so that you can curry favour with them against a time where you might need assistance. Rather I think that this is in line with Jesus comment that when we do this to the least of these we do it to Him. It seems to me that we should be making such acts to demonstrate the love of God to people of all social levels with no hope of reward beyond the glory that accrues to the Father. Public service organizations are great humanitarian outfits that offer assistance to people who are in distress however these activities are earth bound. There is no lifting the recipient person out of their personal drama and pointing them to Father. Dont get me wrong, if one or both of my sons came to me and said they wanted to join one of these clubs I would encourage them to do so. We need to show people and the love of God and positive human regard to people. When we offer them Gods love in the shape of human support where they need that help. Then our Father God gets the glory and thankfully this is a growing part of the Community of Faith, groups such as Habitat For Humanity, and many other Church based groups are popping up all over the place that attend to peoples needs based on Gods love. While this has largely focussed on organisations the truth is that the heart of people who are motivate by service is what is behind the existence of the organisation. We need to develop the sensitivity to hear people crying out in their distress and to present the love of God to lift them out of where they are. This is a God action to find the proof of this statement just go to the Old Testament and find the words and God heard His peoples cries and He acted.