How to Serve Others (2 of 6) By James Boice

2. We must help one another. The desperation people have in needing to talk to someone is not always merely their desire to be heard, though that is important in itself. It is also often the case that they need help. Their speech is really a cry for assistance. If we stop to listen to listen to people, we will find that their needs come rushing to the surface, and we have infinitely more to do than merely wash their feet. There will be people to feed, thirsty ones to whom to give a drink, naked people to clothe, lonely people to visit, sick and dying persons to care for, and so on for a host of other needs and obligations.

The problem is that helping people is seldom convenient. We have our own schedules and our own hours, and days are full. This is perhaps a bit truer of our time than earlier times due to the frantic pace of modern life, but our situation is not fundamentally different from what people of earlier days experienced. It is always inconvenient to help others. It was inconvenient for the Samaritan in Jesus’ parable who helped the poor man who had fallen prey to thieves. He had his own journey. He too was on the way to Jericho. He too had business of family obligations. He interrupted these. He stopped his journey, attended to the wounded man, deviated from his itinerary in order to take the victim to an inn, spent the night, paid for his care, and then planned to return the same way after his own business was settled. This is what service means. It means putting others’ well-being ahead of our own. Bonhoeffer writes,

It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are distaining God’s “crooked yet straight path” (Gottfried Arnold). They do not want a life that is crossed and balked. But it is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”