Not what I can, but what is needed

I sometimes tell myself, when difficult things need to be done - let's just do what we can. This works in the sense that, by definition, none of us can do more than our best. 

So, do what we can. Those of us who are good at one thing, will do that thing to the utmost of our ability. Others will do other things to the utmost of their ability.

But "let's just do what we can" can quite easily morph into, let's just do what we *feel* like doing. It's at this point that we often tell ourselves comfortingly about "self-care" first. Love yourself first, otherwise you can't love others. 

But for the most part, this isn't really right. 

If doctors and nurses had chosen to love themselves first, no one would have been manning the hospitals through the long days and nights, and through the various Covid waves. 

No, they loved others first. 

If our parents had chosen to love themselves first, far fewer of us would have had phlegm sucked out of our noses as babies, been helped through mental sums or 听写, or sent to university or wherever else on money our parents could have enjoyed themselves. 

No, clearly they loved us first.

It is true that everyone needs a break. That's why we recognise that longterm caregivers for example, do need to be looked after themselves, and given a rest too. But this is needed precisely because they have *already* chosen to love *others* first. To "love yourself first" is usually nothing but the comforting sound we make when we don't feel like loving others.

Loving others first is not easy. What can we do to help us consistently do that? 

1. Gratefulness

Gratefulness is a good starting point. There is a good reminder in Deuteronomy 8. 

"When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God... Be careful that you do not forget... otherwise when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud... you may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me"

When we receive good things, it's natural to think we deserve them, and that we earned them. But it's really only because God gave us the ability to do so, in confirmation of His good promises.

When we attribute our success to our own hard work or ability, we make them our god. And what do we do for our gods? We worship them. We give them offerings. We put our lives at the altar of hard work and ability. So we work even harder, rely even more on ourselves. And when the rewards come (if they come!), we naturally want to keep them for ourselves!

On the other hand, if we work out of gratefulness, then when the rewards come, we know we are merely recipients of gifts. It's much easier to share what we have freely received ourselves. 

It's important to work hard. But working hard out of gratefulness for God's assured goodness for ourselves and for others, is filled with so much more peace than working hard in constant terror that we may otherwise fail ourselves.

Self-control

I recently read self-control being defined as "being able to keep one's self in check... not letting our circumstances cause us to lose control... it's choosing, under significant pressure, to chase after the important instead of the urgent" (Fruit of the Spirit, YouVersion).

It's easy to do the right thing when I'm under no pressure. But when I'm feeling burdened by work. When I'm physically tired. When someone irritates me. When I just feel like relaxing. What is my reaction? 

I need to teach myself to turn to God and ask Him to give me self-control, to learn to keep loving others first. It won't always work immediately. 

I might snap at someone - a colleague or a child. Then I have to have the self-control and self-awareness to tell myself - I need to apologise, make amends and explain things. 

I might decide, no time for God today - no time to serve, no time to just sit down with God, no time to love His people. Then I have to have the self-control and self-awareness to tell myself - I need to change my conduct, or the circumstances that led to my conduct, now.

So self-control doesn't only mean never doing the wrong thing. It also means admitting I've made a mistake, and then having sufficient mastery over myself to get over my pride, laziness or stubbornness, and doing what it takes to correct it, right away.

Others-ness

Loving others first can sometimes, inadvertently, become an exercise in self-absorption. It is important that we serve in ways that God has given us strengths in. But sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that God only wants us to do things we like to do.

But if we only ever do the things we like to do, then... is that really loving others? If someone needs a coffee, but we send a cookie instead, that's nice, but... 

One aspect of self-absorption is often ironically manifested in what we view as charity work. 

I run what I call a bread distribution exercise. We started it because we had access to a lot of bread. So we organised ourselves to go to rental homes every month to give bread. We hit every home on every floor, hundreds of loaves each time. That sounds great!

But over the years, we realised that a lot of people don't actually need the bread. I mean, they mostly like it, but what do they really need? 

They need our time and our friendship.

So we have a choice. Do we focus on what we have (the bread) or what they need (our time)? So we changed - we now visit fewer homes, but for a longer time. Our work seems smaller, less visible. We can't boast about feeding hundreds. We can only say, we visited 3 families. But now, we are not doing what we can. We're doing what they need.

The same goes for our work overseas. We support a village school and some of the surrounding villages on a nearby island. When we first started, we kept thinking from the perspective of "what we can do?". 

And we ended up bringing things we could get our hands on, rather than things they needed. We tended to think about doing activities that seemed interesting to the volunteers, rather than those the recipients would like.

Did we bring shoes that cannot be used on grass and uneven ground? Did we get nice water bottles for the kids when they have no access to clean water? Did we teach them songs they don't understand? Did we buy snacks here to bring over there, instead of buying over there where we can help a small business? We've made all these mistakes!

But over time, we learned what they need. And we're still learning. We're also learning to plan everything together with them. We ask them what they want. Often, they don't know themselves. They are vague. They change their minds. Outside of the certainty of outcome we often expect in orderly Singapore, things are often much more fluid and unreliable. We learn to live with - "let's just go with it". We learn to do what they need, not what we plan.

That's the power of quietly and consistently growing organic relationships, rather than planning and flawlessly executing one-off, high-profile events. The latter is good for winning prizes. The former is much better for winning people.

I'll end off with this. I met someone recently who asked me about this blog. I said that I write all these down primarily to sort out my own thoughts. I find that writing helps me think. It's what I like! 

But obviously, the writing is also for others to read, otherwise I wouldn't publish it. I hope it helps you. But if you need more - if you want to meet to be heard, and not just read something - then I'll do that too. As I have been learning - it's not about what I can do, it's about what others need!