pay attention

One night my daughter was watching TV in our family room and I joined her. She was watching a series entitled Joan of Arcadia. It was about a teen age girl seeing God in the form of different people. “God” was telling her to do different things to help people or to make a point about life. In one of the conversations between God and Joan in the show, Joan asked God “ How do I know how to help?” and God answered her “ Pay attention to details and behaviors and listen. Do not interrupt. Most people do not know how to ask for help.”
That statement reminded me of an incident that happened to me. Being a self sufficient person all my life I very rarely ask for help or for favors. I would rather do things for myself. I remember during our early years of marriage there was a time when we were having financial difficulties and we needed a substantial amount of money to tide us over and it seemed that the only alternative was to borrow money from a rich friend. I remember the difficult time I had in taking that action. I rehearsed over and over again what I wanted to say and I was imagining the embarrassment that I thought I was about to go through. I was also wondering how I would feel if they refused to help us. I remember the day we were going to visit them to ask for help. I could not sleep the night before. I had butterflies in my stomach the whole day due to tension and when I was talking to them all the hair in my body were
standing up. It was a very difficult experience and I can remember it up to this day. I guess that is how many people feel when they ask for help and why sometimes we would rather not ask. Many times we also need help when we are going through emotional difficulties and I think asking for help in that situation is also very difficult. Unless we are attentive to details we will miss the opportunity to help people.
I am not very observant with details or maybe I am the type that does not want to be involved with people unless directly asked on the other hand Cora is very observant and is willing to take risks in asking people how she could help many times even before they even ask. In one of our sharing group sessions with married couples Cora noticed one couple who seemed troubled. Cora immediately noticed this and she told me to ask the couple to stay behind so we can talk to them. They stayed behind and when we asked if there was anything wrong they started to share about their difficulties with their eldest daughter. During our conversation we were able to listen to them and even made some suggestions. I am sure that somehow we were able to help them even a little bit. Thanks to Cora being attentive to details we were able to extend our help to a friend. There are many people close to us that may need help. Help does not necessarily mean just material things. We must always be conscious that we have the ability to extend a helping hand if we are only observant.