Lent: Serve

It's the poor one's idea of wealth to spoil himself with luxury and to fill his life with gaudy baubles; the truly wealthy spend their wealth to change the world around them for the better.

The weak envision strength as the opportunity to belittle, bully and humiliate their opponents. Those who have strength are confident in it and see no need to waste it on detractors, and use their strength instead to lift up those who can never repay them.

Those without talent boast endlessly about their accomplishments, and those with neither vision nor capacity to lead surround themselves with craven admirers who croak their praises all day long like a chorus of toads.

The most successful ventures are made possible by people whose contributions we never see. The news commentator whose show bears his name would never make it to air if someone didn't empty his wastebasket each week. The billionaire would have no corporation if it weren't for the hourly workers he's left struggling to make ends meet. The state dinner and G7 conference would have foundered without people working in the kitchen, chopping carrots, grinding pepper and plucking chickens.

Who are greatest and the most important? Don't look in the halls of status and power. Learn to look instead in the lowest of places, for the battered wife holding it together for her children, for the custodian mopping the floor everyone walks on without a second thought, for the nameless waitress who brings you pancakes and coffee in the morning.

Look for those who serve and escape notice entirely, and be dazzled by how close they are to heaven.


Copyright © 2020 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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