Serving Others is Hard Work

Awhile back, a Los Angeles police officer came across a brown El Dorado Cadillac illegally parked next to the curb on street-sweeping day. The officer dutifully wrote out a ticket. He ignored the man who was seated at the steering wheel. He reached inside the open car window and placed the $30 citation on the dashboard.

The driver of the car made no excuses. No argument ensued—and with good reason. For you see, the driver of that car had been shot in the head ten to twelve hours before. He was sitting up, slumped slightly forward with blood on his face and he was dead. The officer who was preoccupied with writing his ticket didn’t even notice that anything was out of the ordinary. He just got back into his car and drove away.

My guess is that that happens to us sometimes as well. We see people whom Paul called “dead in their sins” and we are not even aware of it. In other words, we see people whose lives are empty, people who don’t even know that God loves them, people who are wandering around with no purpose or sense of meaning. They are lost in every sense of the word—and yet we fail to see the need in these people’s lives.

It is hard to get out of our comfort zone and get involved in the lives of others—especially when these “others” bring with them a load of troubles. It means that we will have to invest our time, energy, finances and emotions to help their troubled lives. But these are the people for whom the Gospel was intended. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12).

We, as followers of Christ, have been called to live out the love of Jesus Christ within our families, in the workplace, in our community and in our church. Let us commit to serve the world as Jesus served the world. “If anyone would be first of all, let that person be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).

Blessings,

Tim Hobbs, Pastor