If You Would Serve Them, Love Them

By Susan Hainsworth

The schoolroom in the basement of the converted church looked large and bare, even though a long table and some chairs were set up in the center. The pale green walls were lit by fluorescent lights the length of the ceiling, and a noisy radiator hissed in the corner. The room was not cold, but as I shivered in worry and tension I felt as though I were still outside in the snow.

The situation was not in itself frightening: I was to teach a group of refugees who had been driven from their homes on the other side of the world, and who could not yet speak the language of their new country.

I was not frightened of them. They were the kindest and most willing of students. But they needed so much. They had suffered the terrors of war. They had been driven out of their familiar patterns of life into a world almost completely alien to them. My experiences in the world seemed so small compared to theirs. I was afraid I would not be able to help them.

I have felt this same kind of fear many times. I felt it when I knocked on the door of a sullen and resentful woman who didn’t want visiting teachers, but whose unhappy life cried out for the healing power of the gospel. I felt it with a neighbor who had had such a bad experience in his family life that the joy of the gospel was hidden from him. I felt it when a member of my own family suffered prolonged physical pain.

The anxiety and fear that have often obstructed my efforts to serve have gone away only as I have recognized three important principles: (1) I cannot solve another person’s problems. (2) Loving another person unconditionally is the most powerful way I can serve. (3) I must depend on Christ, the only source of unconditional love, if I am to bless others.

I Cannot Solve Another Person’s Problems

Earth life is based on the principle of free agency. God allows us to be tried in many ways. And we are allowed to choose for ourselves how we will respond to those trials. Each of us is ultimately responsible for his or her own life.

Lehi taught his children of this principle:

“And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall, they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon. …

“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil.” (2 Ne. 2:26–27.)

In our efforts to serve and teach others, many of us try to take upon ourselves too much responsibility for the lives of others. We feel that we must solve all the problems that bring sorrow to the people around us. This feeling can make us feel anxious over circumstances we cannot control. We may also try to push another into a solution he or she has not chosen.

I now realize that I cannot change many things about the situation of my students. I cannot change the war that drove them from their homes. I cannot change the fact that they will now have to spend many years rebuilding their lives and overcoming emotional scars. I cannot give them everything they need to be happy and comfortable in their new country.

These ideas seem simple, but they were difficult for me to accept. I wanted to believe that I could make these people happier. And I could, as I later realized—but not by solving their problems for them.

Unconditional Love Is the Best Service

My first insight into how I could best serve came as I thought about how the Lord helps me. Sometimes he gives me direction when I ask. But much more often, he blesses me with a sense of his love. He assures me again and again that he loves me and accepts me as I am. Despite my imperfections, I know he has a vision of my potential that is far above my own, and that he will help me reach it.

This feeling of God’s love for me has been the greatest blessing of my life. But as I thought about my own service, I found that giving this kind of love was far down on my list of ways I could help others. I had focused on solving others’ problems, rather than on loving them unconditionally.

Mother Teresa is a nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work among the very poor of India. She knows the healing power of love in the lives of people with severe problems. She feels that sharing the love of God is the best way to serve. She described how she helps those who are very sick, many of whom have little will to live:

“First of all we want to make them feel that they are wanted, we want them to know that there are people who really love them, who really want them, at least for the few hours that they have to live, to know human and divine love. That they too may know that they are the children of God, and that they are not forgotten and that they are loved and cared about.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1977, p. 68.)

As I began to think of my refugee students as people to love, rather than as people to help, my anxiety over them left me. I found new energy and joy in their service. What is more, it quickly became evident that I was doing more good than I had done before. My students developed confidence in me and began asking my help in doing things they could not do for themselves. These opportunities would not have come if they had not first learned that I loved them.

I began to have the same kinds of experiences with other people. The lady to whom I was assigned to be a visiting teacher became comfortable enough to go with me to church. My neighbor who had had a bad family life enjoyed being with me and my friends so much that he began resisting the negative influences of his family.

We Must Depend on Christ

My efforts to love others as the Savior loved have not always been successful. I am not strong enough alone to withstand the pressures and frustrations of my own and others’ imperfections. We cannot bless others if we rely solely on our own strength, or even if we ask God to help us use our own strength. We must allow the love of Christ to fill our souls. Then we become instruments of a power stronger and higher than anything we can become on our own.

“Abide in me,” the Savior taught, “and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

“I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” (John 15:4–5.)

When I read this passage, I like to imagine a branch being broken off of a grapevine. The branch quickly withers and dies. It is no more able to bear fruit, for it cannot live without the life-sustaining vine. In the same way, if we do not draw our life from Christ, even though we may not see anything happen immediately, we are dying spiritually as surely as the branch died physically. We are not able to bring forth the fruit of service, “for without me ye can do nothing.” But if we do abide in Christ and allow his life-giving love and strength to fill our souls, we have a great promise. Christ continued:

“If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

“Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

“As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love.” (John 15:7–10.)

I have found that if I come humbly and faithfully before God each morning and ask him to fill my soul with his love, I am blessed abundantly. I can care more for others, serve them with less fear of my inadequacy, and bless them in ways that would be impossible without his help. In a small way, I have learned to “abide in his love.”

The realization that the best way to help others is to love them unconditionally has brought new joy and energy to my efforts to serve. As I rely more completely upon the Savior for the love that can bless others, I feel more a part of his great work of salvation. And I rejoice in the goodness I now see more clearly in all of his children.

Photography by Michael M. McConkie