We Should Help Those That Want to Help Themselves.

The Wicked Orchard by Sidra Owens
5 min readAug 18, 2023
Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

The title of this article may have you thinking,” Hey, she just misquoted a bible verse.”

It may surprise some and delight others to know that this popular quote did not originate in the bible.

I guess that goes to show that we can learn something new every day, but more to the point, the title indicates the lesson I learned when I was 14 years old.

In many ways, I was not a typical teenager. I wasn’t obsessed with popularity. I wasn’t trying to go to the games or waste my time hanging out at the mall when I didn’t have any money.

I was an introvert and extremely practical, much like I am as an adult, but the two things that I was missing, which falls in line with just about every teenager who’s ever lived, were patience and grace.

One day in civics class changed all that for me.

As I said, I was fourteen and a sophomore in high school. This particular morning our teacher was making us read over the chapter out loud. At that age, I often wondered what the point of that activity was. I figured it was the teacher’s way of getting out of having to actually teach. But nevertheless, we were reading out loud, but instead of going through each student one at a time, our teacher was asking for volunteers.

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