Serve (like a grownup).

Our Sunday sermon was on the third part of our mission statement, “Serve.” It was about serving as Christians. Here are some of my notes, just bits I pulled out because I liked them so much:

What is Christian service? An act of love and humility. It’s not patronizing. It’s saying “I would be the one in need, except for the grace of God.”

Our natural tendency is to want to be served. When we serve, we give others an opportunity to see Jesus.

So, I got home from church to find a message from work that they need me in early, we’re trying to cover someone who’s sick. And, of course, this means I can’t do laundry, cook dinner, or do anything but go straight to bed and pray for sleep soon.

Well, before this, I’ve felt like I had two options: suck it up and do it, or say no– which means that the other people who do a lot of the coverage will have to work even harder. Is that right to do to them? Shouldn’t I be helping out for their sake, if not for the business’ sake? And this all went back to the sermon today, and I thought about it, and I’ll tell you in a minute what I thought.

So this morning we talked about serving others. A friend of mine asked me, is there a limit? How much are we supposed to do? Well, I think there is a limit and it’s a natural one, but it’s one that can be pushed. I think that service, serving others, is the physical action that is the counterpart of the spiritual action of loving others. Love without service doesn’t touch anyone, service without love doesn’t heal anyone. If you push yourself to serve, at the cost of your own personal spiritual growth, at the cost of sleep, of caring for your family, of keeping your own promises? You’ll find your service is bitter and worthless.

You’ve got to balance love, service, and the rest of your life all together:

Service is what pours as an overflow from a life of love and devotion.

Love your family. Love your neighbors. Love God. Love yourself. And what comes up out of that river of love is something you can share, in the time that you’ve got left over. If we all each of us just used our leftover time and energy, and used that to pour more love into the world, what would happen?

And like anything else, the more you do it, the more you’ll be able to; serving makes you more able to find opportunities to serve, to share, to love, to grow.

So, back to my personal dilemma, what am I supposed to be doing? Well, “I don’t WANNA go to work, waah” isn’t a very grownup reason not to do it. We grownups get to have feelings but we don’t get to decide what we do and don’t want to do based on them.

But what about:

I need time to carry out my responsibilities to my family.
I need time to take care of myself.
Having to come in for 12 hours with no notice means I can’t cook my own lunches, which COSTS me money, which I’d rather spend on something else.

Those are good, reasonable, grown-up answers. So I have a list of things I’m going to ask for, things that will let me help out flexibly but still have the resources I need later on, when I talk to my boss about this later today, and see if I can’t change things so that I can help out as needed AND take care of my own stuff.

Funny how things work out when you go at the problem as “How can I help?” rather than “How can I get out of this?”