Encouraged

A friend recently thanked me for something I'd done for others. I got offended and then confused. About two hours later, I realized why I was upset: I hadn't done it for them. I'd done it for God. But when they thanked me, it suggested they were supervising my good deeds. I knew they were sincerely encouraging me, but it still felt weird. The conversation left me wondering: when it comes to our faith, who are we supposed to thank?

"I'll pray for you" is the easiest way to pretend to care for someone. Instead of spending time with them, bringing them a meal, or doing something inconvenient, I can put the responsibility on God. I'm saying, "I'll ask God to take care of you" without wanting to do anything myself. Maybe turning "I'll pray for you" into a cliché is one reason we wonder if prayer works. We're saying we pray, but we often aren't.

When a local campus ministry asked me to come and speak, I got excited. I had a lot of information to share on the topic they'd requested. As I prayed for our time together and practiced my talk, I wanted to encourage them in their faith. I thought of ministry as going in one direction: from me to them.

One of my favorite movies is *The Sound of Music*. Maria's free-spirited love of God and others inspires me. As she's leaving the abbey, she murmurs, "When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." It's a bright, optimistic idea. It sounds like it could be one of the Proverbs. But it isn't actually in the Bible.

In Brainerd, Minnesota, at the height of the COVID pandemic, a man came to the drive-through window of a Dairy Queen. He asked to pay for his meal and for the person behind him. As each new car pulled up, over 900 drivers continued the chain for two days. When people in our group do something kind for us, we often feel obligated to pay it forward.