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Help Yourself
"God helps those who help themselves". If I fall
and I cannot rise, but I try to rise, somebody will pull me up. But
if I am just lying on the street, nobody will pull me up. So the trial
to rise is all that I have to put in. There should be effort to make
that trial - if I fall into a well, at least I must shout.
You know one night recently, in my house, we all woke up thinking there
was a burglar, because there was a lot of splashing - water splashing.
And I thought somebody had fallen into our well. True enough, when we
went to the well, there was a cat! Somehow it had jumped and fallen
into the well, and it had made such a tremendous splash, we heard it
in our bedroom, probably 40 yards away. And then of course we put in
a rope and a bucket. It took us half an hour to pull that poor thing
out. Now what happened you see; the cat was suspicious of the very rope
and bucket that was let in for it and it would not scramble into the
bucket.
So like that, we are suspicious of the Master - "What is this
fellow trying to do to us? Why is He talking of morals? Why is He disciplining
us?" Where is He taking us? Why? Can I not do it by myself? So
we rebel against the very force that is going to pull us up, rescue
us first from this mire, from this sand into which we have sunk and
make us into something that we should be.
So progress means, (1) willingness to become what I have to become,
(2) subjecting myself to the forces that are going to help me, (3) avoiding
all that is going to pull me back.
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