Empty Handed

Help. Why (why!) is help so hard to ask for?

My husband occasionally travels for work, just two or three times a year. As a very involved husband and father, he’s always willing to pitch in for any need I have. So much so that when he’s gone, his helpful presence is definitively missed. During one of his rare travel weeks, I became aware that I had commitments to two children in three different locations on one night. There wasn’t time enough between the appointments to collect and drop off the right child at the right venue. I couldn’t pull it all off by myself, so I bit the bullet and tapped a few friends for some assistance. It was difficult to ask; I don’t like putting my responsibilities on another’s shoulders. I consoled myself with the notion that I’d gladly reciprocate in the future. They were gracious, and cheerfully arranged their afternoon and evening plans to support me.

This week, in a completely different situation, I had to ask for help again, but from different people and for different reasons. The need was much more significant, not merely a matter of being late to art class. It involved an enormous commitment of precious resources… resources that I don’t have and will never have.

I am unable to tranquilize the pain of my need with future reciprocity: I simply won’t be able to.

Though asking for help chauffeuring my kids was challenging, making this request was almost crippling. For me, the ability to reciprocate when asking for help seems to mitigate the condition of need. It makes me feel less needy, perhaps because my need appears limited in duration or nature. Where I feel able to repay, I am more willing to be indebted, if only temporarily. Where I am destitute of skill, time or money, I resist asking for help, because I am unable to give back. The pride of self-reliance, in other words, keeps me from seeking that which I genuinely need.

To receive Christ, we must, in humility, acknowledge our utter bankruptcy before God: I am sinful and in desperate need of a Savior. I have nothing to offer in exchange for my redemption from the judgment I justly deserve. I come to the Throne empty handed. And this is precisely how the Father intends it: that we are fully aware of our inability to earn the Grace, pay for the Gift. But God doesn’t stop at salvation and justification. Those events set in motion another work of the Holy Spirit: sanctification, the purifying process of becoming holy.

I struggled deeply to ask for help this week. I struggled even more profoundly to receive it. In and out of tears from the discomfort of my need, I slowly – too slowly – became aware this was something I needed to wrestle out and be purified of. God was pressing me to again be willing to acknowledge my poverty. Not for my salvation, but my sanctification. My discomfort in receiving the help I needed, but couldn’t repay, revealed a prideful independence, a lack of reliance on my Father. In humbly confessing my temporal needs to man, I would also confess my need to the Lord. The act of asking for help became a sanctifying work of the Spirit.

I want to more readily ask for help in the future, without promise of compensation, as fruit of this experience. I hope to see my needs as God’s tool to strip away another layer of my pride, purifying me and making me holy, set apart for His purposes.

In the emptiness of my upturned hands may I find the fullness of God’s sanctifying work.