To Serve and to Be Served

All our lives we are taught to help other people. But if everyone had the attitude of wanting to help others, who would there be to help? Here’s what we learned through my mom’s accident.

We all know people who spend their lives serving others. It is a good thing to do; and in fact, the Bible confirms this. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Mothers are natural servants

There are probably few people who embody this principle more willingly, diligently and of necessity than our moms. Many mothers are used to being caregivers for their families.

I was blessed to have a mom who took care of me and my siblings as her full-time job while we were growing up. She cooked our food, washed our clothes, taught us German and countless other things. Space is not sufficient to describe the ways in which a mother serves her children and her family.

Often this natural tendency to serve carries over into other areas of life. A mom sees her neighbors, friends or fellow Church members in need and is quick to jump in to help. This is a great character trait to have, and serving others is the right thing to do. And, of course, there are many others who do a fantastic job of serving—not only our moms.

Christ’s example

We are all supposed to serve, and we are all supposed to be good at serving! However, if we were all serving, who would there be for us to serve?

Consider the example of Jesus Christ. Of course, He spent most of His time serving others, but in Matthew 26:7 we see an example of someone pouring precious ointment on His head. When His disciples became indignant about the waste of the ointment, He corrected them. In this case, Jesus Christ set the example of allowing Himself to be served.

The accident

On a wet, icy Minnesota winter afternoon in February, my phone rang at work, and I sensed something was wrong. The caller was from a local store and let me know that my mom had fallen and would need to go to the emergency room. I knew it had to be bad, or they would not have called me. I quickly gained permission to leave my office and picked my mom up.

First there was the long evening in the emergency room to fix the badly broken wrist. Then, following the trip to the doctor a few days later, there was surgery.

A servant needing to be served

All of a sudden my mom, who had always been self-sufficient, found herself with an unusable dominant hand. For a while she felt like the list of things she could not do outnumbered the list of things she could!

She did not want to ask me to help her, but she quickly realized that she needed that help. This ended up being okay—after all, I am her daughter, and family members are there to help one another as much as they possibly can.

Not long after the accident and the surgery, one of the ladies from Church called and asked if my mom could use some food that a few of the ladies were willing to prepare for her. After a brief hesitation, Mom said, “Yes.”

After many years of serving her physical family and her Church family, my mom understood the true meaning of allowing herself to be served.

Barbara Lee attends the Twin Cities, Minnesota, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, and works as an IT business analyst in the financial services industry. She is a musician and an exercise enthusiast in her free time.

See more about relationships in the “Relationships” section of the new LifeHopeandTruth.com site.