service

today i went out with a group from campus crusade for christ for a service project that was meant to raise funds for the ministry. my group was working at this neat little place in the middle of downtown called the bloomington playwrights project. its this theater where they produce first-run plays for the community, and just being there felt really artsy, because the building it's in used to be a bar, and then it was a body shop, and now it's this little theater with all sorts of stuff in it. so our job was to arrange the costume room, which sounded really easy until i saw it. you literally could not move a foot once you got into the room, and there was absolutely no way of finding a costume in there. so we spent three hours taking every costume out and putting them together and spacing out the bars they were hanging on to make more room, and rearranging props in boxes, and all sorts of stuff. it was definitely a lot harder than it sounds, believe me, you can ask anyone who was there.

the funny thing is that we were supposed to do a second project for the last two hours that we were supposed to be serving, but they canceled because it was supposed to be outside work and the rain made everything gross. so we didn't do it. and i thought i would be happy because honestly, when i woke up at 7:50 and had to hurry to get ready and walk to the union by 8:15, all i could think of is "man, i don't want to work for the next five hours." and then i got there and realized that it wasn't nearly as bad as i thought it would be--even at 9 in the morning.

it really got me thinking about service and why we do it. i had to volunteer at the boys and girls club during the fall semester, but i hated going in to volunteer there because i worked in the teen room, so the teens didn't want me in there at all and honestly i didn't do anything worthwhile--i sat there and watched them do homework or play super nintendo for two hours every week. so obviously the spiritual/emotional/whatever else-al fulfillment was completely nonexistent.

service is something that we're definitely called by God to do. the disciples walked around healing people in the name of Jesus, and just look at all the amazing things that happened through them. they weren't going out and serving to fulfill a community service requirement for a grade in their g203 class, they were going out and serving for the glory of God, that people might see His light through them. and i don't have much of anything to base this off of, but i think they wanted to do it. then again, if you were facing massive amounts of persecution, you'd really have to have a desire for something if you made the decision to follow Jesus.

this just really makes me want to go out and serve people, this summer especially. i don't really know of a ton of non-profit organizations at home that need help, and i'm not sure what good a poor college kid with absolutely no practical knowledge of the world can do. but either way, i think we're called to go out and do something to show people Christ through our actions, not just our words.