I once was having a poisonous turn of mind. Here is what I was thinking at the time:
When I was feeling bad I was thinking, “I am hurting and in need, yet I will not call out to people for help. People can help (and possibly would help) if I called to them. I do not call, and they do not reach out to me. I feel bad that they do not reach out to me. I feel they should reach out to me, but I know they will not if I don’t say anything. I know they have no special care for me (and why should they)? I feel as though we are all in a river, but I have been caught like a leaf on the side. The other leaves continue downstream as we all are supposed to do. I know if I do not call out I will be permanently stuck, and it will not be the other leaves fault, it will be my own fault – I could have called and possibly they would have helped.”
The big trick here is to realize that although you may want someone to reach for you (and perhaps they ought to reach for you) the greatest probability is that they will not reach for you. They do not think of you, they don’t have to. Even if God tells them to care for you people pretty much do as they wish, not as God wishes.
If there is reaching to be done, you must do it.
When you have reached, realize the scene will not play out as you imagined it in your mind. The play you imagined will be re written by the other because he holds the pen that writes his life. You only write your part, the other writes his. What you write together is how life turns out.
Some feel hurt when the leaders do not recognize them, but the leaders do not have to. The hurting will set stuck if they wait too long for the recognition to happen. Maybe it all means we must look to minister than to look for, or expect, ministering. All we can control is what we do and not what the others do.
Herein has God manifested his great love for us: in that when we were yet sinners he died for us, He came to minister not to be ministered to. What is God like? – he shows us by what he did and does. He ministers to us. If we are to be like God, we must minister.
