"I just want to help."

My job is the craziest, most wonderful, emotional, and rewarding work I could ask for. For those that don't know, I work at Palmer Home for Children (a home-style facility for social orphans), providing transportation to various activities of the kids', whatever else needs attending, and just hanging out with some of the best kids around town. They are precious, and so much fun, but there needs are often overwhelming to me. Emotional instability, anger problems, intense sorrow from their past life (usually inflicted by their own parents). Just yesterday one of them exploded (nearly literally) for a reason unknown to me (he was in another room with his House Dad), but his screams were deafening. I ached for him. It was scary, unnerving. He is 12.

I want to help. I just want to help. But oddly, this job, while providing millions of opportunities to do just that, has inadvertently revealed to me just how very selfish, empty, and ultimately futile our desire to "help" can be. Without the sheer grace of God, that is. I have had to check my motives. Do I want to help this person because they are desperately in need of God's love? Or because I believe that I have some special ability or gift to impact others? Because I need an outlet simply to show off my relational abilities? Because I... can?

So many questions, lessons to learn.

However, despite my true, sinful self - my actual lack of anything sincerely great or noble - I press on. I press on, because God has called me out of darkness. My old self is gone, washed away with the rest of the filthy sin of this world by the blood of Him who died for me. My inability is no excuse to quit persevering, to stop ministering to the saints as well as the lost. Indeed, it's the very knowledge that drives me - God uses weak, sinful humans like me to change the world for His glory. History proves that.

And I couldn't ask for better news than that.

Jayden (5, whom I wrote about previously)