By helping others you help Yourself

Young Mrs. Smith stood in her doorway, looking over the desert that shimmered with heat under the blazing sun. As it rose higher, the shadows of tall cacti shrank and the cicadas shrilling in the sagebrush drowsed into silence. No life stirred except where, against the sky, buzzards planed and glided on motionless wings.

Yet Mrs. Smith found nothing dull in the vast open space with its silent shifting of shadows and colour, and vowed never to return to the noisy bustle of city life. Nor was she lonely, for she had her children, her sevenyear- old Timmy, and little Anne, two years younger, and over there, where mountains showed blue through the desert’s veil of heat, was Jim.

She smiled as she thought of her husband. It was the year 1910 and he was the local missionary. He had to travel many miles by horseback, visiting and encouraging the church members who were scattered and living far away from any churches.

Mrs. Smith had no real worries. The Lord always took care of them in the desert. He provided enough water in their well for them and their animals and caused their garden to flourish under the hot sun. She turned back into the house and, crossing the kitchen with its great iron cooking-stove that never quite went out, called from the open window.

“Timmy, Anne!”
“Yes, Mother,” they answered, and came out of the open stable, where the four-wheeled buggy stood, and where only the goat was tethered, since the horse had gone with Jim.

“I’m going to see if I can find any prickly pears for supper tonight,” she told them. Timmy, dark-haired like herself, hopped on one foot and cried, “O, goody, goody!” Anne, who had her father’s ruddy curls, thrust out her lower lip and protested “I’d rather have an orange!”

“Well, we’ll see,” her mother said and turning away, she went out to the desert. With the sun’s heat prickling through her dress, she walked on past the cacti that, like huge candelabras, raised elbow-jointed arms towards the sky, to the other cacti, whose branches were made of flat, oval disks, strung together like great beads, and at whose tips grew the pink, egg-shaped pears.

These she knocked off with a stick, then rolled them in the sand, to rid them of their hair-thin spines, that could stick so painfully in the mouth and throat. Then, gathering them in her basket, she turned homewards.
As she passed the candelabra cacti, she heard the sudden, harsh warning of a rattlesnake that sounded more like the hiss of escaping steam than a rattle.

She had never seen a “rattler” before, but there was no mistaking that grey, black, diamond-patterned body, coiled like a thick rope, and the rattles at its tail’s end vibrating over the coils.

It was about three meters away, but it could leap farther than that, by launching itself from the powerful spring of its coiled body. Paralysed with horror, she stared at it as it sprang. At first she felt nothing but the blow of its head, like a stone throw against her ankle, and she stood motionless, unable to think.

Then as the pain began, like the touch of a red-hot poker, her mind cried out, “In a few hours, I shall be dead!” The horse was gone, the nearest neighbour was 8 kilometres away, and she dared not try to walk so far for help, lest she fall on the way, and the children be left alone. The children!

What was she to do? She knelt and prayed to the Lord, asking His guidance, and He put an idea in her mind. If she was going to die, she must make sure her children survive until their father returns.

Desperately she hurried home, while the pain rose like a flame up her leg. She must prepare food for them, enough to last until Jim came back. In the kitchen she stood, half dazed wondering where to begin. Then she opened the blowers of the stove, put on more fuel, and went down to the underground storeroom.

In trip after trip, each more painful than the last, she carried up supplies. Soon, in iron kettles on the stove, a vegetable stew was boiling. On the marble slab on the pantry she set out bread and butter.

Her leg felt like hot iron now, rigid, and almost too heavy to drag about. Yet her head seemed light, and empty of everything but an echoing voice that said, “Sleep! Let me sleep!” It went on, “Nothing else matters, only that. Sleep!” But her heart found the answer, “No. It’s the children that matter. Nothing but them. Nothing. Lord give me a little more strength.”

And love, stronger than mind or body, drove her on.
She set the tin bathtub on the floor, then went out to the old deep well with its wooden bucket on a chain, and the iron wheel to wind it up. She carried bucket after heavy bucket to empty into the tub. Once she stumbled and fell, so that the water was lost, and her mind cried, “You see, you can’t do it!

Why try?” But she struggled up again. She could do it, she would, for the children must live, they mustl She knew the Lord would give her strength to finish her job. When it was done, and the tub full, she stood leaning against the wall, not daring to sit, lest she could not get up again. About her the air looked dim and seemed to waver, as though she stood under deep water. She wondered if anything remained to be done. Then, pushing herself away from the wall, she went to the door and called, “Timmy, Anne! Come to supper.”

She had set out buttered bread and goat’s milk for them, and as they ate, she stood looking at Timmy’s dark, tousled hair and Anne’s copper-red curls, thinking, “I shall never see them again – not ever again.” But she forced her lips to smile as she said: “My darlings, I have to – to go away tonight. The Lord has a mission for me.”

“Why?” demanded Anne, while Timmy said firmly, “You can’t. Dad’s got the horse, and you can’t get into town, to the station, without it.” “Somebody is – coming to fetch me,” she answered. “Now, listen, my darlings. There is food in the larder. Eat what you want, but don’t waste anything – not a thing. Do you understand? There’s water in the tub, but use it only for drinking, not for washing.”

Timmy nodded, but Anne, who was a dainty little girl, wrinkled up her nose and asked, “Not even my hands, Mommy?”
“No, dear,” she answered and said to the little boy, “Timmy you’ve seen me milk the goat. Do you think you can do it, too?”
“Of course I can,” he said, nodding again.

“Then remember to do it, dear,” she warned him. “And, both of you, you’re to stay near the house, and not go outside the wire fence Daddy put up.
And most importantly, have your morning and evening worship because you want Jesus to protect you during the day. Timmy, promise to take care of Anne, and never let her out of your sight. Remember, you’re the man of the house until Daddy comes, and you, Anne, promise to do as Timmy tells you. Promise, both of you!”

“I promise,” said Timmy solemnly, but Anne complained, “He’s not my Daddy, only my brother. Oh, all right, I promise.”
“It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?” Cried Mrs. Smith, hearing herself laugh as though from a long way away. “You two, playing at house-keeping, all by yourselves! Now, come along to bed.”

With numb fingers she managed to fumble Anne’s buttons undone, and when they were both in bed she kissed them, not daring to clutch them to her lest she frighten them. She did not feel as though she had a body at all, now, only a sort of heavy, dark cloud about her, dragging her down and down. But there was still one more thing she must do.

The pencil in her hand felt as heavy as an iron bar as she lifted it and high up, on the outside of her bedroom door where Timmy couldn’t read it, wrote in sprawling letters: “Jim, my dearest, break open the door but don’t let the children come in. Stung by a rattler.” Then, clinging to the doorknob she went in, locking the door behind her.

Now she could surrender, like down, and let the soothing darkness sweep over her. Soon she was asleep. It was very comfortable to be dead, she thought – whatever it was that she lay on, it was so nice and soft. It was pleasant, too, that there should be the cheerful shrilling of the cicadas in the place she had come to. That, and the sound of children’s voices. Children’s voices – a little boy’s voice saying:

“Mom told you not to wash in the water!” And a little girl’s shrill voice answering. “Oh, all right! I only dipped my finger in, anyway!” Children. Timmy and Anne! Mrs. Smith opened her eyes and saw that she was in her own room, with the morning sun streaming in at the window. She moved, and found that she could sit up. She could stand and walk, too though her head swam a little, and her leg was stiff and sore but she was alive – alive!

As she opened the door the children ran to her with shrieks of joy, and she wasn’t afraid now to hug them to her and to kiss them again and again. She told them wasn’t it lucky that she had not had to go away the night before. Just how lucky, how incredibly lucky, she did not dare to dwell on too much, and certainly not to talk about to the children. What a miracle had brought about this most wonderful moment of a life so nearly lost she did not know then. She knelt down and thanked God for giving her a new lease on life.

She was still very tired but she thought smiling, there was no cooking to do. Only one thing must be done and that is to wipe off the pencilled note from the bedroom door before her husband returned.

Young Mrs. Smith became a heroine, with her name in the papers. For on ranches and homesteads that were far from help, the only hope for a victim of a rattlesnake’s bite was to force himself to walk up and down, hour after hour, and do everything possible to keep awake. Mrs. Smith did not know this at the time, but the Lord put the love for her children in her heart, which gave her the strength to do her duty, and it was this love that saved her life.

This lone woman had found the strength from the Lord to keep her going, to keep on her feet with no human to help her. She only smiled, knowing that it was not strength of will, but love and devotion and a miracle from the Lord that kept her going. Mrs. Smith was saved physically when she used her last energy to help her children. She felt like sleeping, but she thought of her children. She must take care of them first. If we help others spiritually, by telling them about Jesus and how they can be saved, we will become stronger spiritually also and we will be saved in the end. We will not be saved if we only think of ourselves and do not help others. The rattlesnake of sin has bitten us and we must be actively helping others if we want to find healing from this snakebite. Jesus has promised to help us as He helped Mrs. Smith. So think
of other people and how you can help them instead of lying down in your comfortable bed and relaxing.