True Service

Once I was asked to give a talk in church about how we use charity to serve. I felt strongly that it was kind of the other way around. Service, I think, is necessary for us to gain Charity. That true love of Christ comes from acting like Christ. He was a man of service whether the service was appreciated or not.

I even think there is a difference between helping and serving. A quote from that said service charity talk: "What is service? I think that the best definition of service is anything that the natural man is unwilling to do. The natural man, as the scriptures put it, is an enemy to God and we could easily say the natural man is not about doing the will of the Father. The Father desires the happiness and well being of all His children. Now it is not like we as humans are incapable of love. His has given us all the natural ability to love. But like most things of the flesh, such love is more self serving and weak as compared to the His charity God desires us to have. That is why we hear of failing hearts. Human love is essential but not enough. Human love makes it possible for us to have friends, fall in love with members of the opposite sex. Human love is what makes us want to have children. But human love alone is not strong enough to keep any of these things alive for long. The world is full of marriages and families that are torn. The reason is because those families were built on the human capacity to love. When that gives out, as it most certainly will, we must yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and become, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him. (Mosiah 3:19) In short, serve one another."

So Saturday turns out to also be a special day for cleaning the church. Friday night brought the infamous phone call to request our presence. For more then a split second I dwelt on the fact that I didn't want to, but I didn't want to say no. Reasons I didn't (aside from the obvious not wanting to do more cleaning then I have to): Fernando wouldn't be available and that means me and 3 kids. . .you finish that idea; there was a huge neighborhood yard sale going on at the same time which means fantastic cheap toys; my throat didn't take my threat seriously and spread it's heinousness to my nasal passages (if you can call them passages anymore). Before I could say no, I found myself asking for the time we were needed.

We showed up at 9am to find one other ward member in the parking lot. Knowing my kids' had a limit to this idea of cleaning the church, we hit it hard. 4 hours, REPEAT 4 HOURS later, we finally finished. The other gentleman vacuumed the whole church. My kids dusted, cleaned the windows and doors, cleaned the bathrooms, and gathered garbage. They started cheerful and excited and went downhill from there. There gripes were feeding into my original lack of desire and then my bitter feelings about being there with my kids yaddie yada yada.

Of course, I told my kids what a blessing it was to clean the Lord's house, which is true. I reminded them that we use the church so we should clean it too. I also said once or twice that I didn't ask them to help because it was fun, but because it was our responsibility.

In the end, the experience could have been 4 hours of real service, but instead, I wasted about 2 of the hours internally griping about the no shows. Luckily, the other 2 hours passed with better feelings. We came to the nursery room and the toy closets were opened. Talia was pretty willing to stay locked in her car seat which left two hand to really clean. My kids were tempted to take the RS brownies laying pretty on the counter, but didn't. I still was more then ready to leave, but when it was done I felt a deep love for the building I have never liked and thought how lucky our family is to have a church so close with a brand new mother's room.