The Definition of Fear

I was in a hurry that day. I pulled in to get gas and rushed in to the station to pay. I noticed the look on the attendants face. She appeared to be distracted and frustrated. I knew I didn’t want a conversation but I felt drawn to inquire about her day. She informed that her vehicle was broken down and she had two kids and was struggling with how to get to work and pickup her kids from their afterschool care program. I ask where they attended and she informed me they attended the Coalition For Kids program at Mountain View Elementary and at the new evening program at Munsey UMC. She informed me she couldn’t work if the folks at the Rock didn’t assist her kids with their needs. She then told me she didn’t have the money to repair her car and didn’t know what she would do. She was desperate, she didn’t know who I was and she didn’t expect God to move in her life on this day.

At this point, as in hurry as I was, I felt I needed to do what i could to help. I knew that if I was only interested in running a program to help kids and never stepped into their families lives I would be limited at the change I would see. I needed to determine what was really important, my schedule or her life. I thought I knew the definition of importance. I learned a lesson, May I share it with you?
I was reminded that importance is summed up at the Last Supper when the Lord knelt down, girded with a towel, and washed all of the disciples feet. Maybe I had known it but somehow it had escaped me for all of these years that Jesus washed the feet of Judas before the supper ever began. He washed the man’s feet who was going to betray him. That is what importance really is.
When we bow to the basin and the towel, importance has a way of being totally removed from our lives. Servants are not very important. Servants have no rights. Servants move at the command and the whims of the master. Servants have no personal agendas they focus on the mission which supercede any personal agenda.
When we do the small things for the Lord, we advance the Kingdom. The whole attitude of importance revolts against the idea of doing something “hidden” in the Kingdom. Yet, when we fill this role of washing feet, great power, great humility, great purpose slowly seeps into our lives. Increasingly, I am becoming convinced that spiritual greatness comes from serving and with heightening anonymity. Through the pouring out of ourselves into the lives of others with no expectations from those actions, that greatness does indeed seep into our lives.
Through your giving to our ministry, you allow us to serve mothers like Tracy who desperately need our assistance. You become our examples of servants through your selfless giving. You become our hands to lift up the tired and weary hands of mothers and fathers so they may love their children the way God intended. I ask once more for you to consider a selfless gift that we may continue to reach the least, the last and the lost.