When You Are Tired Of Doing Good (August 22, 2004)

A prayer I like to say for people who are serving the Lord is that they "not grow weary in doing good" (Galatians 6:9).

Many a servant of God has grown weary and cynical - just plain sick and tired of seeing his good efforts come to naught. Or sometimes worse than naught. "Naught" means zero, but sometimes our labors actually seem to result in a net loss. When the kind-hearted soul sees a bad result springing from his good deed he is tempted to say, "Why did I bother? It would have been better if I had done nothing!"

Remember the boy who handed his lunch to Jesus and saw him multiply it to feed a crowd of thousands? I like to think that that event inspired him to be generous for the rest of his life. See what miracles happen when you give! But suppose the next time he gave his lunch he watched bullies use it as ammunition in a food fight. After an experience like that he might decide afterward to hold his lunch bag a little tighter and say, "This is mine. Go get your own."

It is important to draw a distinction here. A bad result to a kind deed may indicate that the good intentions were not wisely channeled. For example, if a man finds that his efforts to evangelize the lost are alienating people, it may be because he has been disobeying Jesus' command to move on when rejected (Luke 9:5), and he has not been following Jesus' example to leave uninterested people alone (Luke 8:37). A generous giver finds that he has been funding laziness because he was not making the poor work for it (Leviticus 19:9--10), and was not taking their worthiness into account (1 Timothy 5:9-10). A faithful wife winds up with a sexually transmitted disease and an abused daughter because she mistakenly forgave her pervert husband without insisting first on his repentance as a condition of reconciliation. (Luke 17:3). In all such cases, the foolish saint must learn from his mistakes and others'. Many disasters result from good intentions feeding unwise practice.

But sometimes the practice is wise and the intention is holy and the result is still bad. This is when the best of men can "grow weary in doing good" - just too spiritually tired to keep doing the right thing. Have you never known a servant of the Lord who got burned in a ministry, or in a marriage, or in a profession, or in a church - and then just gave up trying? I have. I myself have borne the burden of soul-weariness more than once, and will regret till the Lord wipes my memory clean the sin of not having tried again, or tried harder.

I take courage in the example of a heroine of mine, my sister Grace Washburn. A couple weeks ago, at my niece's funeral, my nephew David said that he had wondered why, in 1988, his parents adopted yet another child after all that they had suffered with previous adoptees and foster children. Grace and her husband Ron specialized in taking in abused and abandoned kids, wards of the state. Many of these proved to be "black holes" of love, unable or unwilling to give back any of the kindness shown them. Some committed crimes - against the Washburns and others - and wound up in prison. David asked, "After all the love that my parents gave to them and they threw it all away, why would they do it again?"

They did it again because God called them to care for needy children, and they would do so without growing weary until God said stop. Sixteen years ago, their efforts were rewarded with little Annie, a sick, Down Syndrome girl whose skin was as black as coal but whose spirit was bright as a fireworks display. Annie received love, and gave it back, and we were all privileged to watch love multiply around her like the fish and loaves that multiplied around Jesus. Annie is with the Lord now - her heart finally gave out. But her life and the love that surrounded her stand as a testimony to the value of refusing to grow weary in doing good. The rest of Galatians 6:9 reads, "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Never give up doing what you know to be right.