Dependencies

As a missionary one of the things I absolutely don’t want is to create dependencies. People who are dependent on me have the wrong ‘god’. They might not ask God for help because it is easier to ask people and when I provide, I run the risk of standing in the way of them seeking and experiencing God.

A good friend gave a passage from a book called Gracia! By Henry Nouwen where the message is that to reach people we need to find their gifts, receive them and thereby allow them to see how God also receives them and they are valuable in His sight – that is what I took from it anyway.

Yesterday an older friend came to my door telling me two things; first that he had an injury to his leg and then that someone had forgotten to give him money for a cup of tea while they had a break in the work they were doing together. I couldn’t find the change he wanted, and then asked if he would like my leftovers.

After he had eaten, I asked him to pray for me and for the teen group I was going to.

Today, when I saw my friend again and asked how he was doing, he told me his leg hurt. I hadn’t heard him when he told me yesterday. He had seen a village paramedic who had given him tetanus injections, but this was ten-twelve days after he had pricked himself on some thorns while building a fence. The oozing wounds needed more and better treatment today. I took control of the situation, gave my friend a little money, told him to get seen at LAMB and then come see me again.

The man is not independent and I am not the only one who gives him the help he needs. Where is the point, when things are going so wrong, that it is all right for me to take over?

My friend probably hadn’t gotten treatment for two reasons; he didn’t have the Tk 203 (DKK 14, GB£ 1.4 or US$ 1.6)! it took to get proper treatment, and he knows I will pay him for work done, but don’t want him to beg from me.

I so desperately want people to trust in God rather than in me, sometimes, perhaps, I end up missing the opportunity to bring the help God is trying to send. Perhaps I am in desperate need for God’s wisdom to know when to give, and when not to; perhaps I am the one who needs to trust God, and just get on with helping my neighbour when I can.