About Boundaries

Last week I was meeting with a student who confessed that she was burnt-out from trying to serve everyone around her. She has strong mercy gifts and is studying to go into medicine, so she volunteers a lot at the children's hospital on top of being a slight study-a-holic.

I have mentioned in previous posts that when it comes to spiritual gifts, mercy is not one of mine. Few things exhaust me more than working some sort of spring break or weekend trip to do Habitat, serve a meal to the homeless or tutor a bunch of kids. Give me door-to-door evangelism in the 'hood (or, what's probably more risky, my own neighborhood) over serving people any day. This does not, of course, excuse me from doing those things, it just means that I'm not going to be super-energized when I do them. Jesus' spiritual gifts test probably would have scored very high in mercy...

So what the Lord does is He gives me great students like the woman I met with last week. She, by her very life, reminds me that the Lord has a special place in his heart for the poor and hurting. And I, being not overly-inclined that way, have perspective to help keep her healthy. And so this is what I told my slightly burnt-out, mercy over-achiever:

Jesus left people.

In Mark 1, at the very outset of Jesus' ministry, he heals a bunch of people. The next morning he goes out to a solitary place and prays. The freshly-recruited disciples form a search party, perhaps a bit concerned that their meal-ticket has disappeared. When they find him, they say to Jesus, "Everyone is looking for you." Jesus response? "Let us go somewhere else."

Jesus did not heal every sick person. He did not feed every hungry person. He had boundaries. He said no.

Christmas time is a time for giving, and there's lots of folks lobbying and tugging at us to give to those in need. And we need to do so, Christians first and foremost.

But for those whose hearts are heavy with the cares and needs of the world, take heart: Jesus left people. You do not have to fix everything. You cannot. There is a Messiah, you are not Him. All of us (mercy gifted or not) who follow Jesus Christ have work to do, good works that he has prepared in advance for us to do. We are to do those works, in step with the Holy Spirit. No more, no less. To do more serving than the Lord would have for you to do is (are you ready for this?) a sin. Ultimately you are deciding that it is up to you to be God, both in your own life and in the lives of the people that you are trying to serve.

And so sometimes that means that you leave good things undone. Thank goodness! We are allowed to be freed from the tyranny of the infinite number of needs in our world to serve first and foremost a loving and gracious God.