Let's serve together!

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Muhammad Ali

It is amazing how God can align certain events in your life.  Perhaps when you look at each occurrence individually you may not be able to see the impact, but when you combine all of these hints that God gave you maybe even for a flash you understand what God is trying to say to you.

I am on Day 30 of reading The Purpose Driven Life.  Throughout this journey I have realized more and more that my purpose involves service.  This is not a surprise to me, but it confirms something in me that I think I tried to ignore.  Well I shouldn't say ignore.  For as long as I remembered I thought that my purpose in life was to help people.  I guess I became discouraged when I felt as if I was the person that now needed help.  I kind of questioned everything that I had believed.

In law school I always was public interest focused, even to a fault.  I thought that I would never become a corporate attorney.  I had the mentality that it didn't matter how much money I made as long as I was doing what I was supposed to do.  But when times got tight and I no longer had that salary coming in my mentality changed.  I subconsciously thought that my worth and value were based on having a job.  And if I didn't have a job then I wasn't helping people.  If I wasn't helping people then I wasn't serving my purpose.  The truth is you can help people and serve your purpose without it being related to you job.

In actuality it is not a job that I want anyone.  NO NO NO I don't want to be a Housewife of Maryland.  I was watching a stand up show from Chris Rock (NSFW) that he did back in 2008 and I think he phrased it perfectly. He said he had a career not a job.  He said, " There ain't enough time when you got a career.  When you got a job, there's too much time".  I want to have a career that doesn't feel like I am working because I enjoy what I am doing.

I have digressed a little.  My whole purpose of this post is to talk about serving.  I have known for awhile that I need to get back into serving.  I volunteer at soup kitchens here and there, maybe at the church once or twice, and maybe sometimes I help my friend at her daughter's school.  But I need to do more.

I think part of the problem is that have the mentality that it has to be big to make a difference.  Yesterday, I saw a homeless man in front of a restaurant as I was getting my mom's dinner.  I could tell from his appearance that he was homeless.  He asked me how the food was and I told him that I would bring him a menu, but he said he didn't have any money.  Now me, I know for the next few weeks I will be scraping by on the money front.  But I thought it was more important to give what little money I had.  So I bought him a sandwich.  He said he didn't ask for which is true, but he took it all the same.  And I felt good about it.

Now today the pastor rolled out the new theme for the year.  It is "Love Out Loud."  But really he told us repeatedly that he was kicking out of the church.  No, not literally.  He wants to us to get out and serve the community.  I left church ready to sign up and volunteer for something, anything.

But all of this was confirmed when I read The Purpose Driven Life passage for today.  Guess what the theme was?  Service!  I feel like God is telling me that I need to be serving others right now, no matter what the capacity.  It is time that I stop making excuses and get out there.  Who's with me?