Serving Options
Decisions decisions.
In football, play starts when the ball is hiked. In baseball it starts with a pitch. But when we play games involving rackets, someone begins by serving the ball (or shuttlecock in the case of badminton) over the net to the opponent.
Recently I was listening to a New Testament Professor from Dallas Theological Seminary, Darrell Brock, speak at a convention I was attending about our attitudes when called to serve. Of course he was talking about serving others as a way of life, not in the context of playing games, but sometimes sports mirror and help us see life in helpful ways.
I think in both situations we will serve either in strife or rest. We are either a bundle of nerves and tight muscles or relaxed and calm - even under pressure.
In sports it can be described as confidence and we on the sidelines watching can sometimes see this fluctuate as the game is played out. Perhaps as fatigue sets in players can begin to doubt their abilities, that they have what it takes.
Professor Brock then cut to the chase with this observation (not a direct quote but close enough).
We either trust in the living God or we have no clue who we are and why we are here.
Trusting in a higher power provides rest because the outcome is no longer up to us. Not believing in God, and therefore obviously unable to have a relationship with him, means we are on our own. And if we are on our own in the cosmos then we are searching for the meaning for our lives. We cannot be sure who we are or why we are here. This is a life of angst and strife.
Serving others in our jobs or families apart from God only ultimately results in strife.
Serving others because God encourages and empowers us increases the quality of our relationships. It explains the idea that to those who have (God) more will be added.
Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?”
And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:
You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.”For this people's heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.