Week 22 · Lesson 1
Service and Giving Back
Week 22 of 23 · Service and Giving Back
When was the last time you did something for somebody who could not do anything for you?
Nothing in it. No favor coming back, nobody watching, no post.
Some people can name one right away. And a lot of people cannot, and that is not because they are selfish. It is because when you have been short your whole life, everything gets counted, and something that returns nothing does not look like it makes sense.
Key ConceptService Is Not Punishment, and It Is Not Charity
You have probably only met this word one way, as hours you owe. So it sits in your head next to court, and something that is a sentence never becomes a habit.
And it is not charity either, which is somebody with plenty handing something down to somebody with nothing. That is not what is being asked of you.
What is being asked is repair. You are from somewhere that has been taken from, by people outside it and by people inside it, and repair is when somebody from a place starts putting something back into it.
Nobody is coming to fix your neighborhood. The only people who ever have are people who were from it.
Journal Question
What has your area lost? Not statistics. Things that used to be there and are not. A store, a court, a park, a person who used to be outside. Write what you remember.
Teaching PointWhat Service Does to the Person Doing It
You have a story about yourself and most of it got written by things you did wrong. Doing something for somebody with nothing in it starts writing a different line, and you cannot argue with your own evidence.
Not lectures, not a program. People who are doing something, on a Saturday, in work clothes. That is proximity, and proximity is what actually changes anybody.
An empty Saturday is dangerous. A Saturday where somebody is expecting you and it matters if you do not show is worth more than any advice.
There is a kid on your street watching who gets respect and how. Right now what he mostly sees is one way to be somebody. You doing something visible for the block puts a second option in front of him without a word being said.
Activity
Write one thing that needs doing where you live that nobody is doing. Small. Then write who would have to be involved to actually get it done.
ScenarioThe Hours and the Habit
Two people get the same number of hours to complete.
The first one counts down. Every Saturday is a number getting smaller and the day he finishes he never goes back, and nothing about him changed.
The second one, somewhere in the middle of it, stops counting. Somebody there learned his name. Somebody depends on him being there. And when his hours are done he shows up the next Saturday anyway, and cannot really explain why.
Same hours, same work, same sentence. The difference was not attitude at the start. It was that one of them let somebody know him while he was there.
Spiritual Takeaway
He rebuilt a wall while people stood there mocking him
Nehemiah heard his city was broken down, the walls torn open and the gates burned, and it says he sat down and wept for days. He was living comfortable somewhere else when he heard it.
He went back. And when he got there, men with power in the area laughed at him publicly. They said what are these feeble people doing, and one of them said even if a fox climbed on that wall it would fall over.
Then it got past mocking and they threatened to come. So Nehemiah put half the people on the work and half holding weapons, and the builders worked with one hand and held something in the other.
They finished the whole wall in fifty two days.
And notice how he did it. He did not build it himself. He put families in front of their own houses, so every man was building the section his own people lived behind. Nobody had to be convinced to care about their piece.
Jesus said whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me. The least of these was not a category He looked down on. He put Himself in it, which means service is not you reaching down to somebody. It is you meeting Him where He said He would be.
Do one thing for somebody who cannot do anything back, and tell nobody you did it. Not for a post and not for hours. Just to find out what it does to you.
Take it one week at a time.
Defining Narratives · Week 22 Lesson