To serve… and be served

It was lunchtime. Inside the fourth-grade classroom, the teacher rested in her wooden chair while the scrapes of moving desks and the squeals of happy children echoed off the cinderblocks. Outside, I stood soaking in the fresh air of the Guatemalan highlands as children flew around me like hummingbirds, pausing to give me quick hugs before darting back to their game of tag. It was lunchtime, and the joy of the children was effervescent, albeit a bit loud for my forty-three-year-old ears.

I looked over to my teammate who stood across a walkway at the entrance to a nearby preschool classroom. We both glanced down at our cupped hands, full of cookies, crackers, fruit slices, and torn-off sandwiches quarters. Fruit goo slid through our sticky fingers. But as the children ran by, they continued to bring their precious lunch offerings, adding them to the cornucopia already in our hands.

This action was of course not lost on me. Malnutrition is a significant issue within the Indigenous populations of Guatemala and especially problematic in the Ixil, a region still recovering from a devastating civil war that lasted from 1960-1996. In fact, one of WIND’s initiatives is a feeding program that provides lunches to some of the most food insecure children at the school. For many of these children, this lunch is the only full meal they can rely upon each day. But as the children brought their gifts, I was reminded of the woman that Jesus commends in Mark 12:41-44, the one who gave not out of her abundance but out of her poverty. These little disciples of Jesus were demonstrating something that stretches most of us as adults. Their giving was truly sacrificial.

What was to be my response to these sacrificial lunch offerings? My gut response, of course, was to politely decline. After all, I knew that I was going to have a deliciously prepared full meal in an hour and that I could go buy cookies at a corner tienda for all 450 kids at the school and not flinch at the price. But something deeper within me was stirring as I stood with my hands overflowing. Could I embrace the identity of recipient? I was in Guatemala to serve, but could I also be the one being served?

In preparing for short term missions, churches spend a lot of time talking about how serving will take us out of our comfort zone. And this is absolutely true! One of the reasons I love being in the mission field is because the times I am serving are also the times of the most joy as I draw near to God as my shepherd and sustainer. Missions will absolutely require more from me than I am capable of giving in my own strength, and we are right to prepare teams to experience this stretch. But what I have also started talking about in preparing teams is how being served will stretch you. In the community of Cotzal (where WIND has been for over two decades), families will want to pray for YOUR needs. They will prepare you buxbol and tea as you visit their homes. The school will put on an elaborate welcoming assembly. The mothers will often gift you weavings that they could otherwise sell in the marketplace. If one of you get sick or if there is a dangerous political situation brewing (feel free to ask me this story some time!) the community will come around you and protect you. Yes, you should expect to serve. But you also need to prepare to be served.

I am reminded of an emotional conversation I witnessed between my dad (the co-founder of WIND) and one of the teachers at the school. After profusely thanking my dad for all that WIND had done in Cotzal over the years, the teacher had one unanswered question. “Why did you choose us?” My dad, after a long pause, responded, “We didn’t choose Cotzal; God chose Cotzal for us. And I want you to know that God has used YOU to change my life.” After hearing this, the teacher started to weep and was so overcome with emotion that, after placing a meaningful hand on my dad’s shoulder, he silently left the room.

This interaction is seared into my mind because it illustrates the power that comes with being the gift giver. Letting yourself be served reverses the power dynamic that can become problematic in missions. When you allow others to serve you, it gives them dignity. It allows them to boldly proclaim, “I have something of value to the Kingdom.” Yes, we demonstrate love when we serve, but we also demonstrate love when we allow others to serve us. And what’s more, God will use that posture of humility, that acceptance that you are in fact the outsider and the needy one, to pour into you. Living in an affluent society, we can sometimes lose sight of our neediness. But allowing others to serve us pulls back the veil and exposes us for who we are, those in constant need of our shepherd.

If you have never been on a mission trip and you feel your heart stirring towards trying one, I encourage you to take the courageous step of saying yes to that invitation. God will use you to be His hands and feet as you serve others. And as you serve, remember, it is through both serving and being served that we experience God.

So, I will continue to let those cookies pile in my hands and that fruit goo slide through my fingers. And I will choose to see each offering as God’s love being made manifest in the face of an 8-year-old child.