Look at Two Real Life Examples of How To Help Others

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Do you know someone who looks healthy yet does not fully participate in life activities? Perhaps he or she suffers from an unseen disability. You have the desire to help and support the chronically ill. You are compassionate, but you are always busy. So, how can you?

For Christmas one year, a friend of our family gifted us a simple but meaningful gift. This excellent cook promised us cookies each month. Joe and I and our teenage boys treasured these offerings, enjoying them to the max.

This easy-to-execute help meant I did not have to bake as often. But can you imagine how much more help and support a group could be for the chronically ill?

The following two stories are real life examples of the impact groups of people made. In these cases, they were from churches.*

A Widow’s Gratitude

A widow’s husband suffered from ALS for eight years, during which her church faithfully supported them. She wrote the following letter to her church. As you read, see what a variety of actions their friends used in encouraging and assisting this couple.

“Ever since the first symptoms of ALS appeared over eight years ago, you have surrounded us with love and support. You have cheered us with innumerable notes and letters and cards, some hilarious, some profound, some just warm and caring, but all greatly valued.

“You visited and you phoned, often from faraway places.…Many of you prepared and brought marvelous food which nourished our spirits as well as our bodies. You shopped and ran errands for us and repaired our broken and out-of-order things while yours waited. You swept and shoveled our walks, brought our mail, dumped our trash. It was possible for us to be a part of our church services because you recorded them. And you brought gifts of love, too many to count, to brighten our hours.

“You ‘doctored’ and even repaired a tooth right here in our home. You did ingenious things that made life easier for both of us, like the ‘coughing jacket’ and signal switch that Norm was able to use until the last few days of his life. You shared Scripture verses with us and some of you made it your ministry to pray for those who came to our home regularly to give respiratory treatments. You made him feel like he was still a vital part of the music industry and of the church music ministry.

“And how you prayed!!! Day after day, month after month, even year after year! Those prayers buoyed us up, lifted us to particularly hard places, gave us strength that would have been humanly impossible to have, and helped us to reach out on our own for God’s resources. Someday we’ll understand why Norm’s perfect healing did not take place here. But we do know that he was with us much longer and in much better condition than is the norm for an ALS victim. Love is not a strong enough word to tell you how we feel about you!”*

Norm surely knew he was loved and provided for during his lifetime and his wife’s load was lightened.

On a sacrificial level

A group of sixteen women organized into teams of one pair per shift to help Martha, a twenty-six-year-old woman. She had contracted Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) less than a year earlier. Her father had died of ALS the previous year and her uncle two years before that, so she knew what to expect. Within three months of her diagnosis, she needed around-the-clock care and had moved into a rehabilitation hospital. With her disease progressing so fast, she had one desire: to have two weeks in her own apartment. The sixteen women caregivers and seventeen others who prayed for Martha and her helpers were part of a Christian community who adopted Martha as a project and volunteered everything necessary to fulfill her wish. As a result of their love, Martha lived two weeks in her home and came to God in Christ. Martha was not invisibly disabled, and her helpers invested heavily as they rearranged their lives. But this extreme example shows how cooperation can accomplish large projects.*

Closing Thoughts

So, whether you work as an individual or part of a group, you can offer support and help for a chronically ill person and their family. What an impact you can make!

Share Your Thoughts

How have you – or someone you know – been helped?

© FJ and Carole Griffitts, Sunbreaks in Unending Storms, adapted from Chapter 12.

For more info about Sunbreaks in Unending Storms, see our website, Sunbreaks Books.

Check out more real-life examples of how churches have helped.

*The two examples of helps are taken from the book, Where Is God When It Hurts?, by Philip Yancey, rev. and expanded (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, ©1990), 2009.