My nearly two-year-old son’s white disney one-piece, dangled in the open courtyard in the middle of the cavana, on a wire, over the grassy courtyard of my inlaw’s encircling house.
It was South America, and I had heard they had maid’s. However, this was the first time I ventured to this place, since being only recently married.
Butlers, maids, cooks. It sounded strange, this life he lived as a child…I had to see it for myself.
After eating on their long, solid wood, hand-carved table and sitting on high-back, intrinsic chairs, I stood up, just naturally, to take my plate to the kitchen.
I had lived independently, prior to getting married. Had a duplex in Seattle. We know how to be self-sufficient…especially here in America.
But I was instructed not to get up, not to leave that gorgeous, long table. “Someone will come to pick up your plates” they told me.
The waiting to be served was painful.
I didn’t like hand-outs, help, and deeply struggled with this idea…if I didn’t take care of myself, no one else would help me.
Back and forth, I stood, like a teeter-toter, between the kitchen and dining room, watching my husband’s family’s face as they instisted I come back to the table….
Yet, let the maid’s take my plate, clear the table, when I was a guest in their home?
A deep pain crept inside, “Who are they to serve me?” I was just a girl, twenty-three at that. I was in my husband’s father house….a guest….why should they have to help me?
By the end of three weeks, I got it. I couldn’t sweep up after my own mess, clean my own table, make my own bed. I was a guest, and they were servants.
Today, I look at that word, “Servant”, and I see it in a different context.
- A servant is someone who is paying a dept to another.
- A servant is a personal attendent, someone who does tasks (especially domestic tasks) for another
- A servant follows and supports others. It never leads…it follows the voice of their master.
I ha
d a lot to learn.
And yet, as a child of Most High God, I knew love leads us to be “bondservants”, freed, unchained, uninhibited….
As a result, the overflow of that union is that we become willing to serve one another. A bondservant is the act of purposefully tying yourself to the work of another…out of love, appreciation, and adoration for that person.
The act of giving your life away as a sacrifice because of the blessing of someone else paying the dept we should have paid, taking the sin, we should have carried.
Freedom makes bondservice a delight, a gift. It’s a form of loving someone so much, appreciating their gift, that you offer back in service, the dept that was once paid for you.
As a child, service didn’t come lightly. Though my mom modeled it perfectly; always giving to those in her community…I struggled and was more self-protective.
Yet, I learned, service isn’t a chore. It doesn’t have to be painful, or burdensome.
Like a man of great love, who carries the weight of someone else…when we serve for the right reasons (And God knows our heart) we can find joy and purpose, peace, and even greater adoration for the one who calls us to serve.
It is true, what Scripture teaches; despite the depositing, giving, and heavy sacrifices; His yoke IS easy, His burden IS light.
And nothing can separate us from The One we tie our life to…not trouble, not trials, not persecution, not accusations.
- Love welcomes all, gives all, serves all…despite how they have been treated.
- Love cannot be hurt or wounded, taken advantage of, or offended. Love is bigger than these.
- Love is a banner covering over all the ugly. It rules and reigns, and ushers us into realms we never even imagined….
- Love takes us captive, illuminates our thinking, draws us deeper into His heart, and away from the pain the is offered at every turn.
- Love knows no fury, no malice, no revenge. Love lays down it’s life willingly, cannot be tarnished or imprisoned.
- Love flourishes when all else fades. Love comes like a dove and settles gently on our pain, making the scars go away.
- Love welcomes and embraces, accepts, informs, and is married to truth…those two never can be separated.
Oh, how I knew nothing about service in my twenties….nothing about what it means to give up a life, offer my life because of His price, or love like Christ modeled to many….
Until I was forgiven.
And then….I started learning, it is for loves sake, Christ’s sake….we give it all away; our time, our opinions, our moments, our thinking…
Everything we become, slowly is offered, laid willingly on the cross….
And it is out of this kind of love; sacrificing, surrendering, all consuming, overwhelming, all possessing love…
We can and willing serve.
1 John 4:7-11
Beloved, let us [unselfishly] love and seek the best for one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves [others] is born of God and knows God [through personal experience]. The one who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did know Him], for God is love. [He is the originator of love, and it is an enduring attribute of His nature.] By this the love of God was displayed in us, in that God has sent His [One and] only begotten Son [the One who is truly unique, the only One of His kind] into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [that is, the atoning sacrifice, and the satisfying offering] for our sins [fulfilling God’s requirement for justice against sin and placating His wrath]. Beloved, if God so loved us [in this incredible way], we also ought to love one another.
