Rene's Reading Room

PEOPLE THAT GIVE UNCONDITIONALLY AND SEE IF THEY CAN CREATE A BETTER LIFE FOR OTHERS IS RARE AND DIFFICULT TO FIND. WHEN LAST DID YOU TAKE A PERSON’S HAND THAT WERE FELLED BY CIRCUMSTANCES?

I purely by accident came into a room where some people were busy watching Oprah. I was astounded when I saw how a young athlete created a charity that buys homes for destitute single mothers. His mother was a police woman and single parent. She was shot dead while off duty when she accidentally got caught in the crossfire in a robbery. This young man was shattered by this experience. Her ongoing fight to get together a deposit for her own home was never realized. This motivated this young athlete to create an organization that not only bought homes for mothers that find themselves in such devastating circumstances, but also to furnish these homes with everything that makes such house a home.

He appeared on Oprah when someone that he gave a house to nominated him as her “angel”, someone that cared enough to change her life from extreme uncertainty and anxiety to predictability and peace of mind. Oprah was so impressed with his project that she got one of the biggest furniture suppliers in the US to donate U$ 100 000 worth of furniture to his organization.

While looking at this, program and viewing how several people were recognised for their unconditional and unselfish “angel” work that they did I began to feel like an ungrateful taker. I suddenly realized that most of us become so involved in our own game of life that we never give a second thought to the needs of anybody else.

We literally fall over people that we could help without too much effort, but are either too busy or self-consumed to lift a finger to change their obvious disastrous destiny. I am not focused on major things like buying people homes, but simple tokens of assistance in their hour of need. We can often make a major problem go away for a person by simply making a phone call, but because we are so self-focused, we often fail to even notice the need of people in our society.

Most of us are so busy playing our own little game of life that we fail to notice the plight of the fallen warriors around us. I am also not focused on general charity here. I am focused on spontaneous tokens of “heart” when we identify a person in trouble or that is busy drowning. People proudly identify themselves as Christians, but often fail to do even the basic things that Christians are suppose to do.

Many carry the label of Christian on their faces, but on closer inspection, you discover that these labels are just as fake as the “brand name” labels on their shoes.

I WILL TODAY BECOME SENSITISED TO THE NEEDS OF OTHERS AND SEE IF I CAN MAKE AT LEAST ONE PERSON’S PROBLEM GO AWAY FOR HIM OR HER.

Let us try and for one week become more aware of the problems and needs of the people around us. If we remove the general habit many of us have to only play when we can gain an advantage from what we say or do we will begin to see that we are living in a blood splattered war zone. Let us take off our cloak of selfishness for a while and don the coat of an unconditional giver. Let us make someone’s day, today.

Let us heal a broken self-image or a fragile self-esteem today. A few words of encouragement or a gentle touch on the shoulder is often all a person needs to make a fresh start. We all have hundreds of old and outdated things in our basements or garages, things that could make a major difference in the hands of a needy person.

We sometimes forget that we will spend a hundred Rand on a breakfast with a friend without even giving it a second thought, but will hesitate to give a destitute person Ten Rand that might buy him or her two more days to survive.

Let us try and be an “angel” for one or two people this week. I am sure it will provide us with the wonderful joy of knowing that we made a difference in somebody’s life. It might not change the world and you might not make Oprah’s angel network, but you might just feel better about yourself and your ability to show compassion.

Rene