"This collaborative form of help is the one that God seems to employ most often in becoming 'our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble.' Again and again, the Holy One invites us to use our own creativity and resourcefulness in finding solutions to our problems. God honors our maturity by asking us to partner with him in collaboration, rather than allowing us to remain in an infantile stance. Needless to say, this is often a very stretching challenge. I must admit that there is a side of me that prefers the entire struggle to be assumed by someone else. Friends of mine who are counselors tell me that many people come to them and say, in effect, 'Fix me without it causing me any pain.' They claim that the first therapeutic hurdle that a counselee needs to overcome is acceptance of the counselor's rejection of that invitation. Only then can the counselee commit to real involvement and collaboration as the way to authentic healing.
"Robert Farrar Capon illustrates this same point in an amusing story about a sexton in a Jewish synagogue. He came into the rabbi's office on Friday afternoon and he announced, ‘I am quitting. I am out of here. I resign!’ The rabbi said, 'How can you do this? You have been one of our most valued employees for thirty years. Why are you acting so impulsively?’ The sexton countered, ’I will be honest. I do not believe that there is anything to what we are doing here. It is all a sham.’ The rabbi asked, ‘How can you say such a thing?’ The sexton responded, ’I will give you an example. Every Friday afternoon, as the sun is going down and the Sabbath is about to begin, I have gone into our holy space where the ten words of Moses are thereon the wall and I have knelt down and prayed. ’Yahweh, Lord of the Universe, please help me win the lottery tomorrow night.’ I have done this now for thirty years and nothing has ever happened. I have concluded that there is no one on the other end of this praying business.’ The rabbi said, ‘I doubt that this is a valid test, but the Sabbath is about to begin. Let me go into the holy space with you and maybe I can discern what the problem is.’ They went in together and the sexton repeated the request that he had been making for all those years, and from high up in the shadowy caves of the temple a deep, resonant Voice boomed, ‘Mosey, Mosey! Give me a break. Buy a ticket!’
"This has a touch of slapstick humor in it, but the point is a valid one, for there are many tasks in our world that can be accomplished only through our active participation."
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