Yesterday was a day for our church to serve the community of St. Louis by doing various acts of volunteering. Some people were out there fixing bicycles at a church, some people were assisting local schools in cleaning up their properties. Our group had the great opportunity to go and clean up the yard of a woman mid-town St. Louis.
The church gets the name from Matthew 20:28 which talks about how were not brought to this Earth to be served, but to serve. It does not matter who you are helping when you are serving because in the end, you are serving the Lord. I have done this the past two years and loved every minute of it. It shows how working together you can really do something amazing for someone.
We were out in the yard as soon as we got to this woman’s house. I met some amazing people who were also giving up their Saturday to help this woman. She was unable to care for her yard herself as she is elderly and in hospice care. We had people raking leaves that had been there for quite sometime. Several were pulling roots out of dead plants and re-mulching. A lot of people were doing some clipping of branches, including myself. Then I got a little ambitious.
I decided to knock down a tree that was growing into another yard. The only problem is I did it all with sheers, which I do not recommend! After I got it down, a neighbor looked over and kept thanking me. She told me that she was sure the woman we were helping appreciates all we were doing. I hope so, but if not, that was okay. Her and her husband kept coming out thanking us over and over. It was so crazy to witness that.
We finished up after several hours there and prayed. We all left and went our separate ways. I drove to pick the family up lunch. The wife had been serving by watching the kids of the volunteers all morning. She took control of the group to make sure they were all taken care of while the volunteers were out serving.
So I get to pick up some lunch and while waiting, I am reading a friend’s social media network page. Man was that a punch in the gut and a well deserved one. See I had given him a few jabs for what he was doing with his project. It was not meant to hurt him and we joked around about it. At the time, I thought, no big deal, right? WRONG! He really challenged me in my thinking, which was needed. He learned that a child he was serving complimentary BBQ too had just a cup of noodles yesterday for lunch. What he was doing was giving that child food that their family could not afford. At that moment, I realized it does not matter what you do when serving. What matters is that you are serving and learning and experiencing how we all can help each other. Whether it is cleaning a yard or holding a door for someone or feeding a child who has not had a solid meal in at least a day, it all glorifies Christ.
I thanked him for sharing that because I needed to see that to remind me that every single one of us worked our tails off yesterday for Him. 20:28 is something awesome to experience once a year. The experiences from it need to grow roots and continue throughout the rest of the year.
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