Loading...What does a servant look like? We usually think of someone who is forced to put their life aside in order to do the will of someone else.
That understanding of servants is cast in the form of a power struggle. There’s another way to look at servants and serving: a gift of oneself in love for another.
Last week as I listened to the radio, this story was shared. I was washing dishes and began to weep:
23-year-old Collin Smith grew up in Asheboro, North Carolina.
When he was a sophomore in high school, he was in a car accident that left him quadriplegic.
Ernest Greene, who is 72, attended the same church as Collin’s family, and though he’d never met Collin, he decided he wanted to help.
He offered to do whatever Collin needed, from taking him to school to helping him shave.
And when Collin began college, Ernest went too.
They came to StoryCorps to remember that time.
[tell story]
Ernest gave up what had been the regular, normal life for his 64 year old self in order to serve this 16 year old kid who he didn’t know but who’d been in an accident.
But this is no story about power – the old guy having to serve some demanding youngster. This is a story about love.
This is a story about serving.
This is a story about laying down ones life – putting aside one’s own wants and desires – in order to help another.
This is a story about compassion, and about Christ alive and at work through us.
This is a story about Jesus’ commandment to each one of us to love, put into action.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’” John 13:
Amen
