Christian Service

Taken from: A Gentle Spirit: Devotional Selections for Today’s Christian Woman
Selection by: Ellyn Sanna

“With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.” Ephesians 6:7

Our families are small communities, and within them we experience a ‘magnitude’ of opportunities for service. We are accustomed to thinking of Christian service in terms that are nobler, more dramatic, more like Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta or Florence Nightingale on the battlefields of Crimea, but even for women like Mother Teresa and Florence Nightengale, service boils down to simple assistance in “trifling, external things.” For us as mothers, this means things as trivial as matching socks, packing lunchs, or wiping kitchen tables. “Be faithful in little things,” Mother Teresa advises, “for in them our strength lies.”

Self-righteous, self-centered service demands visible, external rewards, but the sort of service that Jesus modeled does not concern itself with results. Instead, it is contented even with obscurity.

Jeremy Taylor’s Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, written in the seventeenth century, says that we should “love to be concealed, and little esteemed; be content to lack praise, never be troubled when thou art slighted or undervalued.”

We need to remind ourselves that our value springs from God’s love. We find our truest identities in the midst of his unmerited grace.