From Max Lucado’s book, ‘Cure for the Common Life’:
I took a quick liking to the guy. Most anyone would. Jovial. Pleasant and, in this case, donkey determined not to climb that mountain. He let everyone but few of us pass him. “I’m heading down,” he announced. A young life staffer spelled out the consequences. “Can’t send you down alone, friend. You turn back, we all turn back.”
The small circle of “we”, I realized included “me.” I didn’t want to go back. I had two options: miss the mountaintop or help Mat to see it. I coaxed him, begged him, negotiated a plan with him. Thirty steps of walking. Sixty seconds of resting. We inched our way at this pace for an hour. Finally we stood within a thousand feet of the peak. But the last stretch of the trail rose up as strait as a fireman’s ladder.
We got serious. Two guys each took an arm, and I took the rear. I placed both hands on Max’s gluteus maximus and shoved. We all but dragged him past the timberline.
That’s when we heard the applause. Four hundred kids on the crest of Mount Chrysolite gave Matt from Minnesota a standing ovation. They hooped and hollered and slapped him on the back.
As I slumped down to rest, this thought steamrolled my way. There it is Max, a picture of my plan. Do all you can to push each other to the top. From God? Sounds like something he might say.
After all, his Son did that. Jesus’s self-assigned purpose statement reads: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
God’s cure for the common life includes a strong dose of servanthood. Timely reminder. As you celebrate your unique design, be careful. Don’t so focus on what you live to do that you neglect what needs to be done.
A 3:00 a.m. diaper change fits in very few sweet spots. Most S.T.O.R.Y.’s don’t feature the strength of garage sweeping. Visiting your sick neighbor might not come naturally to you. Still, the sick need to be encouraged, garages need sweeping, and diapers need changing.
The world needs servants. People like Jesus, who “did not come to be served, but to serve.” He chose remote Nazareth over center-stage Jerusalem, his dad’s carpentry shop over a marble-columned palace, three decades of anonymity over a life of popularity.
Jesus came to serve. He selected prayer over sleep, the wilderness over the Jordan, irascible apostles over obedient angels. I’d have gone with the angels. Given the choice, I would have built my apostle team out of cherubim and seraphim or Gabriel and Michael, eyewitnesses of Red Sea rescues and Mount Carmel falling fires. I’d choose the angels.
Not Jesus. He picked the people. Peter, Andrew, John, and Matthew. When they feared the storm, he stilled it. When they had no coin for taxes, he supplied it. And when they had no wine for the wedding or food for the multitude, he made both.
He came to serve.
He let a woman in Samaria interrupt his rest, a woman in adultery interrupt his sermon, a woman with a disease interrupt his plans, and one with remorse interrupt his meal.
Though none of the apostles washed his feet, he washed theirs. Though none of the soldiers at the cross begged for mercy, he extended it. And though his followers scattered like scared rabbits on Thursday, he came searching for them on Easter Sunday. The resurrected King ascended to heaven only after he’d spent forty days with his friends—teaching them, encouraging them . . . serving them.
Why? It’s what he came to do. He came to serve. ~Max Lucado, Cure for the Common Life (W Publishing Group, a Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., P.O. 141000, Nashville, Tennessee 37214, 1979, 1980, 1982) 130-131
