Creating well-being

I wanted to save this post from MinEmergent to ponder through Easter....

Is our primary responsibility to ourselves or to the world? When it comes to creating peace there is only one answer that makes sense. I need to be in peace myself before I can possibly help anyone else to be in peace. I have heard this countered like this: helping others has the result of also helping ourselves. But that is a fallacy. Dirty water cannot make other water clean. A hungry person cannot feed a starving person. The blind cannot lead the blind. It was not God's intent that we should come into the world and suffer greatly for the sake of others who are also suffering greatly. That's ridiculous. Suffering creates more suffering. But, healing creates more healing. It works the other way too. Well-being creates more well-being. It's contagious, just like suffering is. We are all holding up a tent pole underneath a heavy canvas tarp. The higher I raise my own tent pole the easier it is for the person next to me to raise his or hers.

Stephen Muires