Mark 6:37: “You give them something to eat.”
Before leaving for the Race, I was a K3 teacher, and one of the responsibilities that came with the job was snack time. Everyday at 2:00 I would wake my kids up from nap and serve them juice and a snack. Because they’re kids and prone to spills (spills I had to clean up), their cups were pretty small. But if they needed more, all they had to do was ask, which was usually a great time to teach them to say “please” and “thank you.” But one day, things went a little different than usual.
One of my kids needed more juice, so she held her empty cup high in the air and said, “Give me more juice.” That’s it…just a demand for me to give her more. There were a lot of thoughts running through my mind, but before I could say anything the girl sitting next to her looked at her and said, “She’s not your servant.”
I knew that in that moment I should have felt justified. I should have thought, “That’s right. I’m not your servant. You can’t treat me like that.” But instead, I was completely humbled.
I AM her servant.
Isn’t that what Christ called me to be. In John 13, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and told them, “I have washed your feet. Go wash the feet of others.” Am I not supposed to enter that classroom everyday ready to wash the feet of each of my kids? To go a little further, should I not be prepared to get on my knees and wash the feet of everyone I come in contact with?
It’s easy to bow up at a world that raises an empty glass and demands you fill it, but my prayer is that I would be prepared to do just that—fill an empty world…to show them the love of Christ in a real way.
What’s hard about being a servant isn’t always when people come to you hurt and broken, needing an answer—it’s when they raise their glass and demand you give them more. The only response appropriate is love. Fill the glass and love them through it. It’s who you’re called to be.
