40-Days to Servanthood: Day 23

In your commitment to servanthood, be sure to include listening and sharing others’ burdens.

These two forms of service, often separated by others, seem intertwined to me. Each is rooted in an attentiveness to others.

Dale Carnegie, in his classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People, tells the true story of a mother who sat with her small son. “I know you love me very much,” the little guy told her. “Of course I do,” she replied, “but what makes you say that?” “Because,” he said, “you always listen to me.” Attentive listening is a form of love.

One of the most disturbing and inspiring books in the Bible is Job, found in the Old Testament. God allows the devil to attack a faithful man named Job. The result is the deaths of his children, the destruction of his property, the loss of his livestock, and a disease that covers Job with open scabs.

Learning of his affliction, three of Job’s friends show up to be with him. For seven days, they do the right thing: They listen to Job give voice to his agony and his questions about God and God’s goodness.

Then they make a mistake: They open their mouths, trying to explain the unexplainable.

They did more good when they simply listened. That had been a way of bearing Job’s burdens.

Of course, there comes a time when, out of their attentiveness to others, that servants take action. Our burden-sharing needn’t be an action that will get us the Nobel Peace Prize. Simple serving will do. A man in one of my former parishes died. While I visited his widow, several others visited. People from the church and the community were dropping off food to help the family during a period when nobody felt like preparing dinners. Between her tears, the widow dabbed her eyes, smiled at me, and said, “There’s a lot of love in that refrigerator.”

Servants are attentive to others; they listen and they bear others’ burdens.

Bible Passage to Ponder: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).