If you’re waiting to be rescued, what are you still waiting for?

By David McElroy · May 7, 2019

Few of us like to admit that we sometimes need to be rescued.

We like to believe we’re self-sufficient. We like to believe that nothing can stop us. We like to believe that we don’t need outside help. But when we’re honest with ourselves, we all know better.

Have you ever been in trouble and pleaded with God to help you? Those of us who are Christians know what it’s like to pray about our troubles and to ask God for help. But even non-religious people are prone to begging God for help when things get bad enough in their lives.

Have you ever been in the depths of despair — begging to God or the Universe or fate for help — and wondered why the solution you desperately wanted never showed up?

Maybe the answer to your prayer was already right in front of you. Maybe you were ignoring it because it wasn’t what you wanted or expected. Maybe it wasn’t convenient.

As I thought this morning about this common human pattern — something I’ve been guilty of — I thought of an old story that I heard in a sermon one time.

There was once a man whose neighborhood flooded and he fled to his roof to escape the rising waters. He prayed for God to rescue him.

Then another man came floating by in a rowboat, and he shouted out to the man to jump in.

“I can save you,” the man said. “I have room for you.”

But the stranded man declined his help.

“No, that’s OK,” he shouted back. “I’m praying to God for help and he’s going to save me. I’m waiting for a miracle.”

So the man in the rowboat moved on.

A few minutes later, another man came by, this time in a motorboat. He shouted for the man on the roof to get into his boat, but the stranded man turned him down.

“No thanks,” he called back. “I’m praying to God and he’s going to save me. I have faith in the Lord.”

So the motorboat went on.

Then a helicopter flew near the man’s house and the pilot spotted the stranded man. The waters had risen far enough that the man was perched on the last exposed part of his roof.

“Grab this rope,” the pilot shouted, “and I can pull you up.”

“No thanks,” the man shouted back. “I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.”

So the pilot reluctantly left the man on the roof. The waters finally rose high enough to cover the entire roof. The man had nowhere to go, so he drowned.

After the man got to heaven and had a chance to talk with God, he expressed frustration and anger.

“I had faith in you but you didn’t save me,” he said bitterly. “You let me drown. I don’t understand why.”

But God saw things differently.

“I sent you a rowboat and then a motorboat and finally a helicopter,” God said. “I heard your prayers and answered. What more did you expect?”

When we’re unhappy, we look for answers. But we have strong opinions about what the solutions have to look like. We’re picky. We’re unwilling to make trade-offs.

And then we find ourselves stuck with a lifelong problem, one which had a solution that was offered to us. After it’s too late, we discover that we had the solution we were looking for — but we were too blind to accept it.

Everybody needs help at times, but it’s up to us to accept the help which can change things for us. Nobody else can do that.

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Here’s my grass-cutting neighbor attacking my yard this afternoon. No, I won’t tell you which house is his, because I’m afraid you’ll steal him to do your yard instead. I really appreciate Harvey. My yard was looking pretty ratty. Another neighbor, Cora, called me on the phone while he was cutting and said, “Did you know someone is cutting your grass?!” I told her not to say anything because he might come to his senses and quit working if she did.

I got an email this week from an Australian psychologist who wanted to let me know that the therapists at the clinic she runs have been using an article I published six months ago — “If you grow accustomed to abuse, you eventually accept it as normal” — as required reading for their patients. (The clinic specializes in abuse by partners and parents.) She asked if I would let them print it for internal use by their clients, too, because she said some clients had found it was a good way to start opening up to the idea that maybe their experiences with a spouse or parent had been abusive and they hadn’t accepted that for a long time. I was really happy to find something I wrote being helpful for hurting people.

Do you remember me telling you about a couple who moved in two doors down from me just a month or so ago — and I saw them out making family pictures with children and grandchildren in their yard on Easter? I finally met them tonight while Lucy and I were out walking. They’re super nice folks, but here’s the reason I’m mentioning this. The man asked if I would mind if he cut my grass. I thought at first that he was just trying to make some money, but he didn’t want anything. He said he just enjoyed cutting grass on his riding lawn mower, so it would be a little bit of extra riding. I told him he was crazy — and they both laughed — but he’s going to start cutting it this weekend. I really do live around nice folks who treat their neighbors well. It makes me feel fortunate to know these people.

This is a day when I’d like to walk away from work for six months or a year and go make a film instead. Not necessarily as a way to get wealthy or as something to do for the rest of my life, but just to take a defined chunk of time and make something I could finish quickly. It was December 2004 when I shot my only existing short film (“We’re the Government — and You’re Not”) and it played in 20 film festivals over the next couple of years. It even won some audience favorite awards. It was a big deal to me. That short represented where I was then, but it’s nothing like what I’d make today. The YouTube version has more than 300,000 views, but the Vimeo version is better quality. As I thought about all this tonight, I pulled out scripts I’ve worked on since then and was surprised to find they were surprisingly good. I don’t really think much now about making a living this way, but I’d still like to make some art. Taking the time off to do it now is not financially feasible, but if it were even remotely possible, I would walk away today without a second thought.

As I pulled out of my driveway Monday, I glanced over at my neighbor’s yard and saw that she had dozens of bright yellow and red flowers looking gorgeous in the bright spring sunlight. I picked up my phone and called Cora as I drove so I could tell her how beautiful her yard looks today and how much I appreciate the work she’s done. I could hear the joy in her voice as she explained that she had gotten away from gardening since her husband’s death five years ago shattered her world. She said this is the first year she’s tried to get back to what she used to do — and she was proud as a peacock to have someone notice. “You have made my day, David,” she said with sincerity. The call didn’t take more than 60 seconds, but I had told her something honest that she needed to hear — and she was happy. It reminded me again that we have the power to make other people happy if we choose to care about them and express the words they need to hear. Whose day can you change today?

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