A few years ago, some people I barely knew completely
overwhelmed me with their willingness to serve my family. My parents had just
gone through a divorce and it was time for the house we had lived in to be completely
empty and clean, and it was far from it. I had joined a few small groups during
my senior year of high school and the summer after, but had not really shared my
needs or any details about the situation I was facing. I only went to be around
people who were similar to me and who I could have fun with outside of my
situation at home. I was living house-to-house, a week at my mom’s and a week
at my dad’s, and my mom and I were trying to get the final things from the old house,
but it was a lot more than we bargained for and the deadline was approaching quickly. After weeks of nightly trips
to the old house, to the storage building and back, and cleaning things to get
it ready for the final day, we were in over our heads. My small group started
to notice the need and without asking for help, they began to fill it.
One Friday night, after mentioning to a handful of people
the plan and getting past being embarrassed to let them see the current state of the
house, I told my mom I was going to hang out with friends (almost not a lie?), took the storage building
key, and took a trip over to the old house. Over 30 people showed up that
night- cleaning supplies, lawn mowers, and vacuums, in hand, and cars to haul
our belongings across town cleaned out and ready to go. Two small groups came together and brought their friends, and I met people that night I had not met before. Over 30 college students came out to someone’s
house they had not met, with their own supplies and tools, with an attitude to
serve on a Friday night in the summer and stayed until the job was done. I was
completely overwhelmed, both with the amount of people that came and the amount
of tasks we had to complete. My mom and I were planning to get up early the
next day and finish everything by ourselves, we both knew that was
an impossible task but did not have any other solutions, so we had to
keep the plan. People worked outside, took over 10 trips to the storage
building across town with all of our boxes and leftover items in their own
cars, vacuumed every room, scrubbed the floors, baseboards, and bathrooms-
every single thing that could be done to that house was done. It went from a
nightmare of a project to a clean, empty moved-out of house in one night, and
no one left until it was finished. As it got later more people showed up and
people went and bought cleaning supplies, mops, brooms, and everything else you can imagine. We stayed until close to midnight, sweaty and smelling
like cleaning products, and joined together at the end and they prayed over me
and my family. A group of people, some I had never met and most who would never see the impact on my family, gathered together on a Friday night in
Tuscaloosa to clean my house from top to bottom, inside and outside, just
simply to bless me and to help me bless my mom. I cried that night as I went
home, overwhelmed by the love I had been shown and trying to figure out how I
could make myself look and smell like I did not just spend hours cleaning a
house and instead was "hanging out with friends."
The next morning our alarms went off early and my mom reluctantly
woke up and started getting the cleaning supplies together for the dreaded day
that was ahead and the impossible task list that had to be completed. She was
expecting a 12-16 hour straight day of cleaning and moving, probably into the
early hours of the next morning. I remember waking up more excited than ever to wake up- helping her get the supplies ready knowing the surprise
that was to come. We got our work clothes on, stopped to get breakfast on the
way, and headed over to the house, mom with dread and myself with delight. We
got there and I talked her into doing a walk through to make a list of tasks before unloading the car and getting to work. As we walked in I recorded
her reaction, she and I both were shocked and completely amazed by what had happened
in such a short amount of time and the fact that people came together to do
something we were dreading, and they did it with a smile. It almost felt like a dream. She was confused at
first, we kept walking through and she was shocked, and by the end of the walk through when she realized there was nothing left to do, I think we both may
have been in tears. There is not a better feeling than blessing
someone who is not able to return the blessing. The idea of a group of people she had never met
coming together to do something this huge for her was shocking, and honestly, I
was just as shocked, if not more. I had never seen an act of love like this
from someone who did not know the person on the receiving end, yet still cared
enough to do the dirty work.
Every year in July my church does what we call Serve Day,
where we take one day and join with people all over the world and make a
tangible difference in our communities with serve projects that usually look
similar to the one I mentioned above. Serve Day is not my natural flow,
mosquitoes think they are my best friend and the outdoors are not for me. Hard
labor and cleaning up someone else’s house is not for me. Doing the chores and
clean up I would like to have done at my house at someone else’s house is not for
me.
But, if doing
these things for someone can bring them the same joy that it brought to myself
and my mom that day, then it is for me. If I get 100 mosquito bites and a
killer sunburn while giving someone the blessing myself and my family were
given that Saturday morning, then bring it on. If it takes me being uncomfortable
to bring the same experience from that day to someone else, then being
uncomfortable is for me.
If being the hands and feet of Jesus looks like Serve Day,
then Serve Day is for me.
If Serve Day is a stretch for you like it is for me,
let us commit to making a difference together this Saturday that we will never
see fully and let us be the reason someone has a story to tell about the blessing
they received. Let us be challenged and ready to go out on Serve Day and change
one life for the better, it just may bless us as much as it blesses them.
"As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies- in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." (1 Peter 4:10-11)
