If you want to change your life for the better, then pay close attention to the people you surround your life with. Nehemiah 3 is a case-study in the kind of people who should be at the top of your list.
Consider verses 7-8, which remind us to surround ourselves with unselfish people. “Next to them, repairs were made by men from Gibeon and Mizpah – Melatiah of Beibeaon and Jadon of Meronoth – places under the authority of the governor of Trans-Euphrates. Uzziel son of Harhaiah, one of the goldsmiths, repaired the next section; and Hananiah, one of the perfume-makers made repairs next to that. They restored Jerusalem as far as the Broad Wall.”
In verse 7 we see a group of people working on the walls of Jerusalem who don’t even live there. They are people who live well north of Jerusalem, in a place under another governor’s jurisdiction. Technically, they didn’t have to be doing this back-breaking work. Why would they offer such sacrifice for something that they wouldn’t directly benefit from themselves? It’s easy to discern – they did it to share in something greater than themselves.
We see this same spirit in verse 8. We see a goldsmith and a perfume-maker working on the walls. They might easily have come up with a dozen excuses why this work wasn’t for them. It’s not in my job description. It’s beyond my paygrade. It’s too menial for me.
Dr. McCoy in the original “Star Trek” liked to say to Captain Kirk, “Doggone it Jim, I’m a doctor, not a politician.” Hananiah could have said, “Doggone it, Nehemiah! I’m a perfume-maker, not a brick-layer. Just smell me!” But he and Uzziel didn’t go there.
“The most selfish thing you can do is to help other people.”
In a column he wrote after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, writer Nicholas Kristof asked the question, If you want to be happier, then which person would you rather be? And then he gives two examples. He describes Richard, a 36-year old commodities trader, who’s healthy, handsome, flits from one gorgeous woman after another, runs marathons, and just spent Christmas in Tahiti, composing an elegy about the Haiti earthquake.
Meanwhile Lorna is a 64-year old woman in Boston, on dialysis, who loves babysitting her grandchildren and volunteering in her church, where she directs the music committee and just helped raise $10,000 for earthquake relief.
Who’s happier? It’s Lorna by far. Kristof points out what study after study confirms, that “people who focus on achieving wealth and career advancement are less happy than those who focus on good works, religion or spirituality, or friends and family.”
A philanthropist said to Kristof: “The most selfish thing you can do is to help other people.” But Jesus said it first. “Those who lose their lives for me, find them.” So hang out with people who show the desire to serve more than their own self-interest. Better yet: be one of those persons yourself.