He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
(Mark 9.35 NRSV)
Writer Philip Yancey once made a fascinating observation about finding fulfillment. In his career as a writer and journalist he has interviewed a wide range of people. He divides these people into two groups: stars and servants. For the stars--super star athletes, famous authors, TV personalities--he has only sympathy. These people, he says, "are as miserable a group of people as I have ever met." According to the standards of this age these people have it made. They are famous, they have their pictures in magazines, they live in big, expensive homes. Some of us wish we were just like them. We don't see the troubled marriages, the tormented psyches, the incurable self-doubts.

Yancey contrasts the life-styles of these stars with a group he calls servants. Servants include such folks as relief workers in Bangladesh and language experts scattered through the jungles of South America translating the Bible into obscure languages. "I was prepared to honor and admire these servants," Yancey writes, "to uphold them as inspiring examples. I was not prepared to envy them." But envy them he did. As he reflected on the two groups, stars and servants, he declares that "the servants clearly emerge as the favored ones, the graced ones. They work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, 'wasting' their talents among the poor and uneducated. But somehow in the process of losing their lives, they have found them."

Dear God, help me to truly find my life in you by faithfully serving your people. Amen.

Ron Newhouse

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