Bonhoeffer’s second essential service:
“The other service one should perform for another person in a Christian community is active helpfulness. To begin with, we have in mind simple assistance in minor, external matters. There are many such things wherever people live together. Nobody is too good for the lowest service. Those who worry about the loss of time entailed by such small, external acts of helpfulness are usually taking their own work too seriously. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests.”
What about you? How do you feel about God’s interruptions? Bonhoeffer wrote in a community of many theologians who often found their “work” in God’s service too important to be interrupted with the daily tasks of life. Some of us need to take note of that.
Others of us may need to look at our service in the smaller tasks and see if we are doing all of them in a way that makes no room for others to serve.
God calls us to serve. Let us look at what it means to serve one another and how we can do that more and more out of love for God.
