Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

PASTOR'S PENS 2008

October 12th “There is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving.”    Henry Drummond A recent study estimated that one out of five Americans is depressed. While there can be physical factors that contribute to depression, it’s no accident that depression has reached nearly epidemic proportions in our day. The truth is that most depression is self-inflicted. Some is caused by guilt or baggage from the past. Some is caused by environment or temperament.  But the number one contributing factor to depression is just plain old selfishness. You’ll almost never meet a depressed person who is also a consistently giving person. When a person is involved in the lives of others, when they are continually looking for opportunities to minister to someone else, when they are constantly on the look-out for how to be a blessing to someone else – they rarely, if ever struggle with depression. One obvious reason is that if you’re continually thinking about others, you rarely have time to focus on yourself. And if your motive is to serve the Lord, then not only are you thinking of others, you’re concentrating on pleasing the Lord.                 Yet not only is serving others the best cure for depression, it also can cure the blahs, anger, discontent, loneliness, stress, etc. Think of nearly any malady that our culture struggles with and you will find that serving the Lord by serving others will nearly always solve it. Most people really don’t need a shrink; they just need to replace their mirror with a big window. Instead of thinking, “Why doesn’t anyone care about me?” they should focus on “Who does God want me to care for?” When you really care about others, you don’t wait to be asked – you volunteer! And that’s real freedom!                 A bunch of men were at the YMCA and were talking about athletes, salaries, families, local gossip and so on. At one point, one of the men said, “When it comes right down to it, we are all basically selfish. We take care of #1 and the heck with everyone else.”                 Another man quietly responded, “I don’t agree with you that we’re all that way, and I’ll tell you why. I stopped recently to get my paper at a convenience store like I do every day. I’ve known the man who sold me that paper for years, but one day he had tears in his eyes and I asked him why.”  The store owner said, “Do you see that bus bench over there? There’s a woman who comes every day around this time. She sits there for about an hour knitting and waiting. Buses come and go, but she never gets on and no one ever gets off for her to meet. The other day I took her a cup of coffee and sat with her for awhile. Her only son lives a long way away. She last saw him about two years ago when he boarded one of the buses right there. He’s married now, and she has never met her daughter-in-law or seen their new child. She told me, ‘It helps to come here and wait. I pray for them as I knit little things for the baby, and I imagine them in their little tiny apartment, saving money to come home. I can’t wait to see them.’”   The man at the YMCA then said, “The store owner took a deep breath and told me that he’d just looked out the window and there were the woman’s son and his family getting off the bus. When they fell into her arms, the look on her face was the nearest thing to pure joy he had ever seen. ‘I’ll never forget the look on her face as long as I live,’ said the store owner.  The next day when I returned to the store my friend was behind the counter and before he could say anything, I asked him, ‘You sent her son the money for the bus ticket, didn’t you?’ The store owner looked back at me with eyes full of love and a smile and replied, ‘Yes, I sent him the money.’ And then this man at the Y told his friends, ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face.” So in that story, who are you? Which one represents your life? Are you like the men at the YMCA who categorize people as largely selfish, and they included themselves in that description–people who simply live for the day and try to take care of their own business and live on a subsistence level. If so, I characterize that person as a cartoon with no color. It’s life and we’re getting the basics down, but there’s not a whole lot of liveliness to the person.                 Or, are you the man in the story who had experienced the joy of the store owner who was moved and touched by a very heartwarming story, but notice that the story is not his own? He’s simply passing on a story that he has heard. He is not the person in the story itself, however. That’s like a cartoon done in color and has life and passion in it, but the reality is that the person himself has made no difference in these other people’s lives.                 Or, are you the store owner? Notice the difference in the experience of life. The man telling the story was warmed by it but the man who made a difference in this woman’s life, and the joy he experienced is like a cartoon which comes alive and makes a difference. Is that you?                 Friend, who do you want to be? Do you want to experience the life and vitality of God? Do you want to experience hope, meaning and purpose in your life–the purpose that comes from touching other people’s lives? If you do, then let me urge you to get off the couch and stop watching life pass you by like you watch it on a TV set. Involve yourself in the lives of others and make a real difference.                 One of our great modern-day tragedies is success which isolates us from people. It has isolated us from discovering and experiencing meaning and significance in our lives. Many people cannot answer the question, “What difference have you made in another person’s life?” Do something for the Lord that really counts! Serve others and find joy for yourself! Remember, Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35).