Reflection
Service serves us as well as others. It strengthens us. When we serve, our work itself sustains us. Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. For the perspective of service, we are all connected: all suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.
Rachel Naomi Remen, In the Service of Life
Prayer
Let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:18
Action
Daily life usually requires us to serve others whether it be family, work, or community. Examine the attitude you bring to this service.
Suggested Reading
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Galatians 6:2
The greatest among you will be your servant.
Matthew 23:11
Among us, who is above must be in service of the others. This doesn’t mean we have to wash each other’s feet every day, but we must help one another.
Pope Francis
Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
Mahatma Gandhi
Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
Leo Tolstoy
As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don’t have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn’t matter as much as how you do what you do.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.
Charles Dickens
Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves. All they wanted was the chance to do good for others and be close to God.
Muhammad Ali