The Simple Blessing of Servanthood

servant: a person who is devoted to or guided by something

Sometimes servanthood is concentrated. It pours down like a fresh rain, it covers everything with the promise of life.

In the course of a few days, a few different friends have stretched across and extended themselves to us in a kind of servanthood, calling us into each other, into community, into the holy places of God.

One friend offered to watch the boys so we can go on a date later this week.

Another friend passed on a journal to me, one that I can fill with words like this, with stories and prayers, with the evidence of miracle-life.

As I drove out of our driveway to go to a meeting, I checked our apartment mailbox and found a bulky package full of whole bean coffee from our dear friends in Arkansas.

Servanthood.

When we choose to serve one another, it’s a way of saying, I see you. I see your life, your need, your circumstances. I see your gifts and  your heart. Let me be a part of that.

A servant is simply someone who’s devoted to something, who is guided by something. It’s someone who gives their energy, gifts, hearts, minds, very souls to something.

These friends of ours, they are devoted to community. They are devoted to seeing others, to capturing grace and refusing to let go.

They are servants who remember us across 705 miles of American soil, who send us coffee because they know what those little beans mean for our good.

Community is a giving and a taking, a back-and-forth exchange, where we care for one another in doses.

Servanthood is an invitation.

Servanthood is an art that pulls everyone involved into the holy part of humanity, those places that some people would say are dead.

But I look around my apartment, and I’m covered in blessings.

I’m covered in gifts, in kindnesses, in graces, in reached-out hands, in prayers and years and years of friends who have served us.

Last night, Julie prayed, “God, let us lean with You and not away from You..”

The way we lean into God is to lean into each other.

So, who are we devoted to? Who do we stretch ourselves to, who do we see, whose needs do we meet when we know they’re pulled thin?

It may be as simple as a hand written note.

It may be as quiet as a whisper,

as informal as a text message,

as tiny as a coffee bean.

But, it’s blessing, nonetheless, a release of one holy thing for another holy thing, an invitation for Kingdom Come.