Why Are We Here?

Why Are We Here?

You have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Galatians 5:13

While sitting at a stoplight, Lorraine noticed a woman on the corner, slumped over a crate. There was a bundle in her lap; Lorraine could see a tiny child’s arm sticking out. The woman was dozing off, and the baby was about to hit the ground. When the light changed, Lorraine drove past them, but then, about three blocks away, she decided to go back.

Gently touching the woman’s shoulder, Lorraine handed her a piece of paper and told her if she needed help with her baby, she could take it to the address she had written on it. The address was her mother’s apartment.

The next day the woman on the crate left her baby at Clara Hale’s house. And as she did, Hale House was born. Since 1969, hundreds of children have found sanctuary in Mother Hale’s brownstone in Harlem. In 1985, Ronald Reagan said this about Clara in his Presidential State of the Union address: “Go to her house some night and you may see her silhouette against the window as she walks the floor talking softly, soothing a child in her arms—Mother Hale of Harlem is an American hero.”

Clara Hale died in 1992, but her legacy has gone on—providing a warm, loving, nurturing home for infants and young children in need.

In addition to providing a temporary holding facility for children until their mothers can get help and resume care on their own, the organization went on to provide transitional housing and relapse prevention for formerly drug-addicted mothers.

When asked why she worked so diligently to meet the difficult needs of abandoned and often drug-addicted infants, Clara Hale would say, “You’ve got to help other people in this world; otherwise why are you here?”

That’s a great question for all of us to ask ourselves. In your marriage specifically, why are you here—for yourself? Why are you two here, together as a couple—for yourselves? Asking ourselves these direct questions is sure to cause any of us to consider the difference we are making, as a couple or on our own, and what we can be doing to make more of one.

He profits most who serves best.

—A. F. Shelton