It seems to me that whenever I go to a mission meeting somehwere I get a free copy of this book or another one like it. I have asked myself if those involved in mission would have given the money to mercy work that they spent buying these books things might be different somewhere in the world. First of all I need to say that I agree with what these books say. We have to be careful about the results of what we do and not create dependancy and yet not shy away from the work of mercy that we are to do as followers of the one who is mercy incarnate. Here is an excerpt from another book that speaks to this.
"The answer lies, once again, not in the right balance between callousness and oversensitivity, but rather in giving ourselves wholeheartedly, as if everything depends on us, while at the same time casting all our concerns on the Lord as if everything depends on Him. We should neither attempt to rationalize away all our responsibility and involvement nor allow ourselves to be so crushed by the unbearable burden of what we think we ought to do but cannot accomplish. Our good works are a sign and a proof of our faith, but it is ultimately by faith, not by all our good works, that we are justified. We may therefore indeed cast all our weaknesses and even our failures on the Lord." - page 73-74. David Bosch "A Spirituality for the Road".
