Helping others never quite looks like the movie in my head. (Many of you have a perpetual film running - don't deny it. It's o.k. Sometimes the feature is coming attractions - the future; sometimes it is it more like Turner's Classics and the reel is of the past.) No matter what is playing up stairs at the theater of the mind, helping never ends up playing out like I saw it on my imaginary screen...which is to say it never goes like I want it to. I suppose that is why it is called "help" and not "control." I don't know about you, but when I help someone, I want them to accept my help in a way that makes them totally commandable. I want the helpee to be so beholden to me - the helper - that they behave exactly, and here I mean EX-ACT-LY as I desire. [Here he rubs his hands together in a crazy scientist fashion and mumbles, "Yes, it is all coming together...ha, ha, ha, haaaa."]

This falacious ideal is part of my twisted thinking. My Ego runs amuck, my pride steps up and runs right along side Ego, and any humility, I may at one time have possessed - runs and hides, when I help. I wish I could say that the help I offered was altruistic, but within that 3 lbs of gray matter, encased in bone, atop my shoulders, "help" always comes with strings. When I think of help, I'm like a puppeter, a modern day Macavillian puppet master. I mistakenly think my help grants me, imbues me, ordains me, down right requires me to exercise power to determine another's actions.

If I help my daughter with her science fair project, she dang well better use the material the way I say. Her presentation needs to look like the picture I have in my head. "Why not?" I ask reflectively, I mean, I helped.

If I spend half a Saturday picking up an out-of-gas friend, putting fuel in her tank, and making sure she's up and running, she dang well better not ever spend her gas money on a carton of Marlboro Lights again! Why not? Because, I said so, and I helped.

If I take a drunk to rehab, help them move out of their apartment, and meet with them occasionally to talk about their alcoholism....well, they dang well better live like I say. Why? Because, I helped them.

If you've ever helped anyone, you know people don't act like you "know" they should. The hard lesson I'm learning is that help isn't control, and help doesn't - almost NEVER - gives power. Help is help and the Lord knows, I need some. More times than I can count, help has been offered to me and I've accepted it (Receiving - trouble with it? That's a whole different issue.)

Help. The theologically astute Elvis sang a great line about it. "If you've got a problem, I don't care what it is. If you need a hand, I can assure you this. I can help, I've got two strong arms, I can help. It would sure do me good to do you good, Let me help." Helping others not only lends a hand to one in need, but helping another helps me. "It would do me good, to do you good." Helping, with no strings attatched, constantly reminds me that only one is in charge and that one is God. The help I offer is only a small part of something much grander that God is doing in, and with, all of humanity. The help is not mine, no matter how good I look in my head. Any help I provide makes my gracious God look great. Not just on the eternal film strip constantly playing in Heaven, but it make Him look spactacular right here on Earth.