Weariness Is Not The Stopping Point

My favorite Bible verse since high school has been Galatians 6:9. It says “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” These words sound wonderful, but they also hold deep, deep meaning. I’ve grown weary in doing good, trying to be good, trying to live a life that others can look at and say, she’s doing the work of Christ., because it’s hard and tiring. Other people do not always appreciate the good you are doing and it’s defeating. I am a physician assistant and I see poor, needy, and uninsured patients daily. I have long discussions about how to take care of the body you were given. I try to empathize with my patients social issues and to truly understand their barriers to care. There are still days where a patient will say, “Can’t you just admit me? They take such good care of me at the hospital!” The thought crosses my mind, “That’s what I was trying to do!” Doing good isn’t always recognized, actually, a lot of the time it goes unrecognized, but we are not to grow weary!

Being a mother is another one of those thankless jobs. It’s amazing how fast a loving child can turn into a fire-spitter! We have loved, taught, cared for, wiped, cleaned this child and there is no instant repayment for all this investment. In fact, it seems that the more good I try to instill in my little ones some days just ends up with a lot of crying, both on their part and mine! I can only hope, since my children are still small, that their father and I will reap a harvest for the conversations and loving embraces at some point. Nevertheless, every day there are new challenges to parenting and I have to be reminded to not give up. And therein lies the hardness of this verse. We aren’t supposed to stop doing good. Even though the world seems to reject our good deeds, even though our loved ones don’t even say a thank you, even though no one seems to want to do any good unto us, we are not to give up.

Sometimes I let the weariness drive the thought of quitting. It’s easier to just throw in the proverbial towel than to keep up an effort of caring and loving others. But I think the part that has to be clear, the part that has to be tattooed into my memory is the harvest we will reap. The harvest is why we do what we do. It’s that patient that sends a card saying, “Thank you for caring about me!” It’s the day when your child is surrounded by others and they say the most heartfelt prayer and you know they can pray that way because you have been their example. It’s the family member that only calls you because they know you are always there to care and have put up with them through the hard times. The harvest can be a great joy in seeing someone else’s happiness restored or even their faith restored because you didn’t give up.

We can easily make doing things into doing good in our own minds, and it’s important that we are aware of this. Being a yes-man or -woman is not doing good, and boundaries are needed so that our souls stay full. But we are not going to reap anything by ignoring injustices, shutting ourselves from others who are not “in” our circles, or by becoming so intertwined in our own selves that we miss the beauty around us either. Weariness is easy to attain. I can overbook myself in a heartbeat, overcommit in a flash. When he wrote Galatians, Paul knew that interacting with the human race was not a self-serving reward and there are some people out there that can draw the breath right out of you, just by being in the same room as them. However, Paul also knew that God’s kingdom cannot operate by the Holy Spirit alone, and those hard to love people, probably need love the most. So he warns us to not grow weary. Not an easy task! 

It’s so hard when you are weary to look ahead, to “keep the eyes on the prize,” so to speak. But that’s sometimes the only way to get through the pull to give up, to throw in the towel, to stop the goodness. We can’t stop because this world needs the good, we need the good, and we are promised a sweet reward. Maybe we don’t get the chance for the reward until Heaven, but I think if we are focused on doing good, the reward shows up on this side of eternity. Sometimes it is years later, sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes we just have to wait for it. Know the path we trudge is a worthy one, and take the opportunity for goodness to abound, because we know this world is weary and needs some of us to be the doers of good!