why Serve Day is for me

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)