How's Your Serve?

             Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)

          How’s your serve? Quite a few years back, I wrote some editorials about making the world a better place. I don’t think they went over well because we tend to want our making the world a better place and our service to be impressive. We tend to want a “ministry” or a “thing” about which we can say, “That’s my thing.” The point of my editorials was that we make the world a better place by exercising so that we’re physically fit enough to help out, picking up litter as we walk the dog, taking care of our sidewalks, driveways, and lawns (or someone else’s), or caring for an ailing great-grandchild. Dare I suggest that being a servant is about doing what you can, where you are, with what you have, now?

          Often, the things that fit this description aren’t big things, and that may be part of the problem. I suspect there are opportunities for me to serve others that I don’t notice. Once again, it’d be helpful if God would lower a note on a fish hook or text me on my phone: “Look at 16 degrees right, about 6 feet away.  Now, here’s the plan…” I chide myself that I’m not aware enough.

          I’m also a coward sometimes. “Help? They don’t want my help.” There have been times when I’ve felt like no good deed goes unpunished. I know better – until it’s time to help.

          Other times, whatever the real reason, the excuse is that I don’t know how, don’t have the strength, or otherwise can’t. But here’s the challenge for all of us. Are we doing what we can?