We are in the middle of Adam Hamilton’s book Half-Truths, in which he takes apart common phrases that people erroneously think are in the Bible. This week we looked at “God helps those who help themselves.” Hamilton takes apart this phrase and helped us land at “God helps those who cannot help themselves.”
In our class time together, we talked about the origins of this phrase (likely Poor Richard’s Almanac, not the Bible), how it gets used culturally, and how only part of it is true. But then we went on to look at how God helps those who cannot help themselves. How does God do God’s work in this world?
Certainly, I think God is active in our world in ways we will likely not ever fully understand and I am in awe whenever I see one of those things. Some things in our world just cannot be explained – the mysterious illness that vanishes, the car accident that should have happened but miraculously did not, and all manner of other unexplainable things.
But I somewhat doubt that most of us will ever see or receive a Miracle (with a capital M). I don’t put it in the realm of “never gonna happen” but more in the “somewhat unlikely” category. And there is no question that if I ever receive or witness a Capital M Miracle, I will be honored.
What I think is more likely is the lowercase m-miracle. There is the ordinary miracle of the friend who shows up with a hug on a day when everything seems to have gone wrong. The ordinary miracle of the kindness of one person helping another through the TSA line in an airport even though they are not acquainted. There is the everyday miracle of a community of regular people surrounding a person who is suffering from dementia to get them the help they need.
Each day we are the recipients of God’s grace and love through the actions of others. Every day, WE are the answer to someone else’s prayers through the ways we partner with God and conspire for Love. I suspect that God moves in and through us in many more small ways than we could enumerate in addition to some of the larger Miracles we might see on occasion.
I think Adam Hamilton is right. I think the phrase should be, “God helps those who cannot help themselves.” But I would suggest an amendment so that the whole phrase is “God helps those who cannot help themselves because we partner with God to serve one another.”
God works through all of us; yes, even you. Why? Because God isn’t finished with any of us just yet – there are too many lowercase m-miracles yet to be done.
