Called to Serve

"Do you want to be a wedding photographer when you grow up?"  Elliot asked Anna.

Anna has started helping my wife take photos at weddings and seems to enjoy it greatly.  That said, she is only eleven and Elliot is seven, so their view of future endeavors could be a bit hazy.

Anna paused, considering her future.  "No," she said.  "I don't think I want to be a wedding photographer when I grow up."

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"  Vince asked, with his mouthful of tater tot casserole.

"Vince, it is hard for me to understand you when you talk with your mouth full of food,"  Anna said, then answered the question.  "I think that when I grow up I would like to work helping homeless people in Mexico."

The children were all silent at this bit of news.  "Don't you like taking pictures at weddings?"  Elliot asked.

"I do like taking pictures at weddings,"  Anna said.  "But there are lots of people who take pictures at weddings.  There aren't a lot of people who want to help homeless people, who have no money and aren't very clean, in Mexico.  And I'm good at cleaning things up and working hard.  I think I could help more people that way."

I don't know what Anna's future holds.  She has a lot of time to change her mind, but I was blessed by the simple wisdom in the reasons she gave her brothers for wanting to serve.

Most of us want to do something glamorous and work with interesting people.  Unfortunately, there aren't quite enough of those jobs to go around.

I think of the passage in the Bible where Jesus told a story about judgment.  At the end of it, the king says "Truly, I tell you, as you have done it unto the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."

We are called to serve -- not the high and the wealthy, but the poor, the people without.  As we look for the needs around us and attempt to meet them, we are doing something more, we are serving our Master.

The world has a lot of glamorous people doing interesting things, it probably doesn't need more of them.  What it really needs is Christians who are willing to serve people in need.