Evolving Self
When God Allows What He Does Not Will
Finding Peace in the Space Between His Heart and His Permission A child
A reflection on the difference between saying we care and showing we care
The last time someone told you about their struggles, what did you do after you walked away?
Three years ago, I sat in a coffee shop watching my childhood friend Paul break down in front of me. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and the man sitting across from me bore little resemblance to the confident entrepreneur I once knew. His clothes hung loose on his thinned frame. His eyes carried the weight of too many sleepless nights. And when I asked the simple question, “How are you?”, everything came pouring out.
Paul’s story began like many others. After college, unable to find steady work, he had started a small shipping company. For a while, it thrived. He had clients, employees, and hope for the future. Then came the cyberattack that changed everything. In one devastating breach, he lost not just his business data but his clients’ trust. The financial hemorrhaging was swift and merciless. Within months, he was bankrupt, starting over from zero, sometimes going days with barely enough to eat.
But here’s what I couldn’t shake as I sat across from Paul, what broke him wasn’t the financial ruin. It was what happened when he reached out for help.
Paul had done what most of us would do. He reached out to his network, friends from childhood, fellow church members, and even family. One by one, they listened to his story with genuine concern in their eyes. And one by one, they offered the same response: “That’s really tough, Paul. God will see you through.” “Things happen for a reason.” “I will keep you in my prayers.” “Good luck, man.”
The words weren’t malicious. They weren’t meant to hurt. In fact, they came from people who genuinely cared about Paul. But as he sat in that coffee shop, reliving those conversations, I could hear the ache in his voice. “Everyone listened,” he said, “but then they just… left.”
His church was filled with successful business owners who could have offered him work, connections, or guidance. His friends had networks he could have tapped into. His family had resources that could have provided a bridge until he got back on his feet. But somehow, the gap between caring and helping felt too wide to cross.
As Mother Teresa once observed, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty.” Paul wasn’t just financially broke; he was experiencing the deeper poverty of being seen but not helped, heard but not answered.
How many times have I stood in that same gap? The question hit me like a physical blow as I listened to Paul’s story. How many times had I heard someone’s struggle, felt genuine sympathy, offered sincere wishes for their well-being, and then walked away believing I had done enough?
There’s a psychology to our retreat into platitudes that we rarely examine. Offering actual help means acknowledging that we have power, and with power comes responsibility. It’s safer to believe we are powerless, that only God or government or “someone else” can make a real difference.
Studies show that 70% of Americans report wanting to help others but feeling unsure how. We are not lacking in compassion; we are lacking in the courage to act on it. We have convinced ourselves that caring is enough, that wishing someone well is equivalent to helping them get there.
But what we don’t realize is that every time we choose comfort over connection, we rob ourselves of something irreplaceable: the deep satisfaction of being useful. We deny ourselves the profound experience of mattering in someone else’s story.
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Paul continued his narrative, telling me how desperate for any income, he had started taking odd jobs, anything to keep food on the table and a roof over his head. One day, he answered an ad to clean up an elderly woman’s overgrown garden. The pay was modest, but it was work.
The woman, Mrs. Elena, was in her seventies. Her children lived in other countries, successful in their own careers but unable to visit often. As Paul worked in her garden day after day, she began to notice things. His attention to detail. His persistence despite obvious fatigue. The way he showed up every morning, even when the work was backbreaking.
“You work like someone who understands what it means to build something,” she told him one afternoon, bringing him a glass of water. The simple observation opened a conversation that would change both their lives.
When Paul finally shared his story, reluctantly, expecting the familiar chorus of well-wishes and prayers, Mrs. Elena’s response was different. She didn’t offer platitudes. She didn’t promise that everything would work out. Instead, she said five words that cut through months of despair: “Wait here. I will make calls.”
Mrs. Elena understood something that Paul’s other connections had forgotten: the moment we see someone’s need as solvable, we become accountable for whether we choose to solve it. In the Jewish tradition, there’s a concept called tikkun olam, repairing the world. It teaches that we are each responsible for fixing the broken pieces we encounter, not passing them by, hoping someone else will handle them.
Her help came in three simple acts: she listened without judgment, she saw Paul’s skills instead of just his struggles, and she connected her resources to his need. No money changed hands. No dramatic gestures were made. Just one person deciding that her network could become someone else’s lifeline.
Within twenty-four hours, she had connected Paul with her son, a business executive who needed someone with Paul’s exact skill set. The job offer came within a week.
“When I got that call,” Paul told me, his voice breaking, “I sat down and cried for two hours. Not because of the job, but because someone finally saw me as a person worth helping, not just a problem to pray about.”
But Paul’s story didn’t end with getting the job. Six months later, he called me with an update that stopped me cold. He had started a small emergency fund at his new company to help employees facing unexpected crises, medical bills, car repairs, and family emergencies.
“I remember what it felt like to fall,” he said, “and I remember what it felt like when someone caught me. Now I want to be someone else’s safety net.”
Mrs. Elena’s single act of connection had created a ripple that was now catching others. Her decision to help one person had multiplied into help for dozens. This is what happens when we choose action over sympathy, we don’t just solve one problem, we create a pattern of solution.
The question that haunts me isn’t whether Paul deserved help, it’s this: What if Mrs. Elena had responded like everyone else? What if she had patted his shoulder, told him God would provide, and gone back inside? Who would have helped him then?
The parable of the Good Samaritan suddenly felt less like an ancient story and more like a mirror. The priest and the Levite who passed by the wounded man weren’t cruel people. They likely felt sympathy. They probably said a prayer for the man’s well-being. But they kept walking, leaving the actual helping to someone else, or to God.
It was the Samaritan, the outsider, who stopped. Who saw the need and met it with action. Who understood that compassion without action is just sentiment in disguise.
I sometimes wonder about all the Pauls who never met their Mrs. Elena. The talented people whose stories ended not because they lacked ability, but because they lacked connection. How many innovations never happened? How many problems never got solved? How many gifts to the world were lost simply because no one offered a bridge?
Everyone has something to offer. This truth settled in my chest as Paul spoke. Even when we think we have nothing, we have something. Mrs. Elena didn’t give Paul money, she gave him connection. She didn’t solve all his problems; she opened one door. But that one door was everything.
How many people do we encounter who are drowning while we stand on the shore, offering encouragement instead of throwing a rope? How often do we mistake good intentions for good actions?
I think of the person at the grocery store who mentions they are struggling to find work while we are connected to three people who are hiring. I think of the neighbor who’s overwhelmed caring for an aging parent while we have a free Saturday afternoon. I think of the young mother in our apartment building who seems isolated while we have years of parenting experience to share.
The opportunities to help aren’t always dramatic. They don’t always require grand gestures or significant sacrifice. Sometimes they require us to ask a different question. Instead of “I will pray for you,” what if we asked, “How can I actually help?” Instead of “Good luck with that,” what if we said, “Let me see who I know who might be able to connect you with resources?”
Mrs. Elena didn’t have to upend her life to change Paul’s. She just had to see his situation as something she could influence rather than something she could only sympathize with.
There’s something seductive about offering comfort without cost. It allows us to feel like good people without the inconvenience of actually getting involved. We can express care without risking anything, our time, our resources, our comfort zone.
But Paul’s story haunts me because it reveals how inadequate good intentions can be when they exist in isolation from good actions. The people who offered him prayers and platitudes weren’t bad people, they were people who had convinced themselves that caring words alone were enough, that expressing concern was equivalent to extending help. This isn’t about prayer being worthless, it’s about prayer without action being incomplete when we have the power to help.
What we lose in this comfortable distance is the transformative experience of being genuinely useful. Mrs. Elena didn’t just save Paul; she reminded herself of her own power to matter, to make a difference, to be more than a bystander in the world’s pain.
In the parable, Jesus asks, “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?” The answer isn’t the person who lived closest to him or shared his background. It was the one who saw his need and acted to meet it.
Our neighbor isn’t just the person in the house next door. It’s the person whose path crosses ours when they need what we have to offer. It’s Paul, sitting across from me in a coffee shop, carrying a burden I could help lighten. It’s Mrs. Elena, recognizing that her network could become someone else’s lifeline.
The beautiful thing about Mrs. Elena’s story is that she didn’t just help Paul; she discovered the deep satisfaction that comes from using what we have to lift someone else up. Her son later told Paul that being able to help him had reminded his mother of her own value and purpose. In helping Paul, she had helped herself remember who she was.
Each of us carries things we have stopped noticing because they have become so familiar. Connections that seem ordinary to us might be extraordinary to someone else. Skills we take for granted might be exactly what someone needs. Resources we barely think about might be the answer to someone else’s prayers.
Paul didn’t need everyone in his church to solve his problems. He needed one person to see his situation as something they could influence rather than something they could only pray about. He needed one person to ask, “What do I have that might help?” instead of “What can I say to make this feel better?”
Mrs. Elena had a son with connections. That was it. That was the resource that changed everything. She didn’t have to write a check or start a foundation. She just had to make a connection.
Mrs. Elena died two years after helping Paul. At her funeral, her son told me she had mentioned Paul’s story dozens of times to friends and family, not because she was proud of what she had done, but because she couldn’t understand why it had taken her seventy years to realize how easy helping could be.
She left behind a simple note in her journal that I can’t forget: “I spent too many years thinking I had nothing important to offer. I had everything someone needed, I just had to share it.”
Before you close this and move on with your day, sit with this question: When was the last time someone shared a struggle with you, and what did you offer in response?
Did you offer comfort or connection? Sympathy or solutions? Good wishes or good actions?
Who is your Paul? Who is the person in your life right now who needs what you have to offer? And more importantly, are you willing to offer it, or will you leave the helping to someone else?
Mrs. Elena was seventy years old, tending her garden, living quietly with her memories and her modest means. She had every reason to mind her own business, to offer Paul a few kind words and send him on his way. But she understood something that Paul’s other connections had forgotten: we are here to be each other’s lifelines.
The truth is, we all have something to offer. Every single one of us. The question isn’t whether you have enough to make a difference. You do. The question is whether someone else’s breakthrough is waiting in your contact list, your skills, your willingness to see their potential instead of just their problems.
Paul found his way back because someone chose to act alongside their caring words. Someone saw his need and met it with action. Someone understood that sometimes we are called to be the answer to our own prayers for others. Mrs. Elena probably prayed for Paul, too, but she didn’t stop there. She chose to be a bridge instead of a bystander.
The line between caring and helping is thinner than we think. Sometimes it’s just one phone call, one introduction, one moment of choosing action over sympathy.
Who will you choose to be?
Soul Reflection: Think of the last person who shared a struggle with you. Did you offer comfort or connection? What do you have, network, skills, time, resources, that could help someone today? What small action could you take this week to be someone’s Mrs. Elena?
Everyone you meet is carrying something. The question isn’t whether you’re capable of helping, it’s whether you’re willing to discover just how much power you have to change someone’s story. Mrs. Elena’s journal reminds us: you have everything someone needs. You just have to share it.
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