By Betty B. Gray

Susie and Janie, 5-year-old playmates, lived next door to each other and spent many hours together. 

One day Janie spent the afternoon playing at Susie’s house. When it was time for Janie to come home, her mother called and asked Susie’s mother to please send her daughter home.

Susie’s mother called up from downstairs to the girls, “Janie, it is time to go home, your mother just called.” 

About 10 minutes later, Janie’s mother called again, asking if Susie’s mother had asked Janie to come home. “Yes, I told her and assumed she had gone. I’ll go upstairs and make sure she goes home.”

When Janie arrived home her mother was upset and asked, “Janie, did you not hear Susie’s mother ask you to come home?” 

“Yes,” Janie replied, “but Susie broke her doll.” 

Her mother replied, “Well, did you stay to help her fix it?” 

“No,” Janie replied, “it couldn’t be fixed. But I stayed to help Susie cry.”

Don’t Waste It

My husband, the late Elvin Gray, preached a sermon years ago, “Don’t Waste It.” I still remember the challenge of that message taken from 2 Corinthians 1. If someone is going through some suffering that you have also experienced, we are commanded to not waste it, but to let them know that we suffered the same and how we survived. My husband was one who would ask members of the congregation to go minister to a person who had suffered what they had suffered.

Or could it be that we are called to go help someone cry?

Seeing Others’ Needs

One measure of our love for Christ is our sensitivity of the needs of others.

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe—She had so many problems she didn’t know what to do. So I searched myself way down deep inside—And thought, I know how she feels, for that has been I. So I went over to help this Old Woman in the shoe—For I had been there, and I knew what to do.” (Sorry, Mother Goose.)

Betty B. Gray is the director of Encourage Me Ministries and nationally performs living dramas of women of the Bible and great women of the faith. Betty is a widow with two daughters, five grandsons, and two great-grandchildren.