Service: An Act of Love and Grace Towards Others
During this semester I have had the opportunity to serve in different areas – at home, at church and in the co
One of the things that God has worked in my heart is to know that service is not only when I help the community but also when I serve my brothers and sisters in the faith and my housemates. Service goes far beyond that. Service is passion. It is loving others without barriers because we love God and because He loved us first. My desire to serve did not come spontaneously. I had to pray a lot and the Lord in His grace intervened.
For half of my Christian life, I didn’t know what it meant to serve God and how it went hand in hand with loving Him and loving His word. At the beginning it was very difficult to help others. I lived a selfish life because I did not want to help people, but God used very wise people to teach me that one way to love my brothers/sisters is to serve him/her. Without realizing it and with daily practice I fell in love with service and I became more aware of the lives of the people around me. Helping was no longer a burden but a blessing, and a privilege that not everyone has.
It is very interesting how God can work in our hearts when we have the intention to serve and how He can use us to bless the lives of others.
There is a recent story which I will never forget. A normal morning I was at home, and one of my housemates was outside and saw a girl who was sitting alone and crying on the sidewalk. Since my housemate did not know if the girl could speak Spanish she called me so I could translate for her. The girl is Haitian. We approached her and asked her what was going on because she was crying. She told us that we could not help her in any way, but we insisted and insisted until she told us that she was in labor pains. The normal thing would have been to give her money for her to go to the doctor or ask for an Uber for her to go to the hospital, but we made the decision to take her to our house and feed her because she told us she was hungry. We called a friend who is a doctor to see if there were any risks. Everything was fine. We examined the whole situation clinically speaking and then we called 911, explained the situation and they detailed what we should do until they could get to our house. She was about to give birth in our house! Her water had broken and she was bleeding. Thanks be to God that the ambulance came and took her to the hospital. I can’t imagine what would have happened if God had not touched our hearts to help her at that moment, or if we had let her go in that situation. God was faithful. She was at our door at the right time.
This moment will be with me the rest of my life. It teaches me that we should always be willing to help.
Written by Lucia Alexander
