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Improving Your Serve


 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13)

            Being a servant is hard work, even when the labor involved isn't difficult. Somehow, service is always needed when you're in the middle of something else. That thing you're doing may be vitally important or it may be trivial, but with uncanny accuracy, the call to serve is made when it is least convenient to answer.
            Not only is the call to serve often inconvenient, it is also often unglamorous, Face it, most of the work that needs to be done in someone's life, or in the world as a whole is more likely to be on the show Dirty Jobs than it is on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Servants were the lowest of the low, slaves or one step up from slaves.
            To be a servant one has to turn her back on the sinful nature that says, "But what about me? Don't I deserve?" When Jesus came to earth, and when He washed His disciples' feet, He certainly did deserve. Deserving isn't the point. In fact, how far away from what you deserve your service takes you may be the point. 
            When I was in Florida last winter, I learned that the Canadians in the park were the ones who volunteered the most. There are undoubtedly a number of possible reasons for this including the fact that they are nice people (they are), but let me suggest one.  They are living in a land that is not their own. They are guests to a greater extent than the rest of us Northerners who invade that small town. Because of this, there is some natural affinity. When one of them needs help, to the others, it is "one of us." Beyond that, whether they like it or not, they are representing their country here. Their misbehavior will be magnified ten times and attributed to "those Canadians." We citizens of the United States might feel some of these same pressures if we went to Quebec.
        This theory may be entirely wrong for some or all the Canadians to whom I refer, but their situation is similar to what we face as Christians.. The world in which we live is not home. As we grow as Christians, the world around us will become more and more a foreign land,  that the Christians around us form a natural community. When a Christian needs help, we're helping one of us. We are also ambassadors for Christ and therefore what we do reflects on Him and on the Church. The fact that we don't do a good job of this may be partly because we lack the needed sense of community with the Church, but not with the world and with our sinful nature.
        The solution to that? Look around. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. Serve by doing the obvious. Serving will build the sense of community that will result in our serving the community.
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