I never thought I’d write a title like that. To me, American Christianity’s greatest struggle comes with not taking the words of Jesus seriously; we prefer following our desires and cultural values. But a recent event showed my error.
Here’s the backstory. Jesus taught the path to greatness, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26). To counter my weakness of self-centeredness, I gave myself to serving. Mission trips monthly. Giving up lucrative opportunities in the automotive and real estate and food worlds in order to pastor. I felt pretty good about that. Until yesterday.
In the midst of sheltering at home in COVID times, Sheila and I took a quick tour of town and returned to see Scottie, our neighbor, mowing his lawn. After parking the car, I jokingly shouted “You can keep going on our lawn!”
He responded with a smile, then I extended the joke to this young father of two, a former high school student of mine and now on the staff of a large church, “We need a lawn boy,” and he laughed, “I’ll bring my son over!” His son was maybe 4.
We chuckled and went inside, only to soon see Scottie and his two young kids mowing our lawn! That cut strip is in the pic above. I went out, told him I was only joking, and he said he knew that. Just wanted to do us a favor. I begged off. I really wanted to do it myself to burn calories, but said it wasn’t ready to mow, not with 6” of rain in the last 5 days. He asked when, I suggested Tuesday, silently planning on mowing it myself Monday.
But back inside, God convicted me of pride. Of self-centeredness. Of wanting to serve and not allowing others the blessing of giving to me. But mostly, for not seeing the depth of how we serve. I took Jesus too seriously, too literally, not allowing others to serve me.
By the way, that wasn’t the first time. I thought a friend helped cure me of that 40 years before. Guess not. So, humbled, I’ll wait for Scottie and his kids to mow my lawn Tuesday. And when he shows up, I need to apologize. For not letting Scottie have the blessing of serving, of not letting him teach his children how important that is.
I suspect many of us share that struggle. We want to serve, and find significance in it. But our pride in serving can blind us to serving others by allowing them to serve us. What’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.
True, some can take advantage of the good nature of others and only take. That’s another issue, for another time.
Kick Starting the Application
Where on the spectrum of serving or receiving do you lie? Think of a recent event that expresses that. Do you need to make some changes? What is one you can do this week?