Gear for the Journey: Service

How are you doing with your disciplines?  Have you experienced a transformation in your spiritual journey?  I hope so.

Sorry for the lack of posting last week.  My intention was to post while I was away at my parents' house, but I got called back for a death in the church and my week was swallowed whole.  I still haven't posted on fasting, but I promise to do that soon.

Since I've just finished preaching service, I'll go with that first...

As I mentioned, I did a fair amount of traveling last week.  It was the first time in a while that I traveled by myself and didn't have my xm radio filling the car with continuous music or talk.  I had to find radio stations to listen to.  When I came into Birmingham, I found a sports talk radio station that carried with me almost to the Georgia state line.  The radio jocks talked about a number of different topics, some sports related and some not so much.  One that stuck with me was a survey that some organization had just completed.

The group surveyed thousands of women across the US (forgive me for not remembering who it was) and asked them all sorts of unusual questions.  There were two that stood out to me:

Half of women surveyed said that they would make a friend obese if it meant that they could be personally thin and attractive for the rest of their lives.  Wow.

More than half of the women surveyed, when given the opportunity to save the life of a stranger by shaving their heads, opted to keep their hair!  Really?  That stuff usually grows back.

Sadly, this isn't just the case for women.  Men have gotten to be just as vain and selfish.  We all look out for number one and won't give up even trivial things to improve the life of others.  In fact, we will sacrifice people that we claim to love for the sake of improving our own lives.  I would say that there's that whole thing about God exalting the humble and humbling the arrogant, but that's another post for another day.

The funeral I performed Sunday afternoon was for a different sort of person.  Her name was Doshia Barham and she was someone who set the example for selfless living.  She was an x-ray tech by trade on an army base, but was, for decades, a sort of community nurse for many of the senior adults in this area.  She took care of her parents and her husband's parents in their convalescence.  She went daily to a friend's mother's house to care for her.  Her mailman even brought his insulin shot to the house ever day so she could administer it.  Countless others recieved help from her that generations of people will remember. 

Doshia understood the discipline of service.  She gave and gave and gave.  She never recieved any compensation beyond the gratitude and endearment of others - and she loved what she did.  These last few months were tough on her because she was stuck mostly in a hospital bed and the tables were turned.  The people she had served now were serving her.  How incredible to see the body of Christ at work!

True service is something to be admired, learned, and practiced.  It's service that is humble, finds joy in its own practice, doesn't seek reward, attention, or compensation, and is habitual.  It's very different from self-righteous service, where we calculate what we will do for "those people," seek results in the form of affirmation or reward, and is done when it's planned (while passing by other, sometimes more obvious, opportunities to serve).  True service is an act of love and a reflection of a relationship with Christ.

Why do we serve?  Simple.  Because Christ first loved and served us.  After all, he took the form of a man and he didn't have to.  He called, taught, and put up with twelve disciples and countless crowds and he didn't have to.  He healed many of physical and spiritual ailments and he didn't have to.  He was arrested, tortured, and crucified and he didn't have to be.  He single-handedly took on death and won, offering us reconciliation with God and he didn't have to. 

Next time you see a cross, look beyond the beautiful stain or the shiny brass.  What do you see?  We place it as a symbol to remind us that God has extended grace to us.  True faith is accepting that grace and extending it to others.  "We love because Christ first loved us." (1 John 4:19)