How do you perceive service, what do you think about it? Forgive me today I would pass on refereeing to the Wikipedia. What is service? My English teacher clearly said this word is originated from the phrase to serve, if this is the case, what is the point serving? We all know what all this is, literally, but can we say of a truth that we know what it means to serve? Really I can say that anyone who can boast about this has served in one capacity or the other.
I’m of a tribe in Nigeria that believes in services, we regard service as a form of Higher Education, a tool for Economic growth, a prerequisite for social status, a norm and measuring tape for Leadership. We believe that the best form of education is when a young man adopts a master (another Man who is an authority in his business, Trade, career or endeavour) as his coach and mentor in other to receive wealth of experience, knowledge and wisdom in the craftsmanship of his master at the end of a given time (which usually spans to more than half of a decade.) what you can call an rather long internship. At the end of this internship, there is a settlement package in form of assets and liquid cash (which is not agreed initially) accompanied with words and wise words, a goodwill and thank you gift to the servant from the master to go forth and bear fruits, make exploits in his business or trade or whatever he was trained for.
At the time of this internship, the servant depends entirely on the master for everything. This system of education has been handed down for centuries from generation to generations. Time will fail us to explore the tenants of this technology existing in the Igbo speaking tribe of Nigeria.
But today, I want to drag our attention to this story we have heard countless times, last week I was able to draw some lessons from it, after hearing for a millionth maybe more times. Many centuries ago a certain servant who served his master faithfully, that he made a name for himself in the neighbourhood as a faithful servant to his master who happened to be a prophet (what you can refer to as a spiritual leader or authority), A great one at that. This servant suddenly died and left his wife and children to inherit a huge debt, from the reaction of the creditors, one would assume he is a serial borrower like (a man I know about in Chinua Achebe things fall apart ) am sure people believed the prophet (his master) and attested to his good behaviour which was enough to trust that he would pay back. It makes me wonder why this man would be broke and question his quality of discipleship or way of life. But whatever his motives are or extent of service is not for me to judge, am here to draw lessons. Maybe he had a plan set in motion, maybe he did not end his life (an eternal wickedness) so that his family would pay the debt, maybe it was an accident, maybe he died while faithfully serving his master (the great Prophet) these are assumptions that will each teach us a lesson.
However, soon a knock on the door changed the course of the lives of the family of this late servant, the creditors had arrived, they knew nothing was left, but they came, perhaps this widow had a plan B going on, perhaps she knew of the debts and a plan had been set in motion to generate this money to pay of this debt, finally they are left with no option but to take her two sons to serve off the debts of their late father, off they go, promising to come back, I can imagine the slammed door (if there was one), the woman would be left without any support system, she would be left to cry her eye-balls out and maybe drown herself in a nearby river, or maybe activate some mutated senses and develop an action plan to off-set the debts. But whatever she must do, she must do as soon as possible, as the sun wasn’t waiting around for her to finish sobbing, and the creditors were not kidding. She ran to the master of her late husband, she had no solution or specific request, she knew the master had an answer, how dare she keep this from the master, she is certain an instruction from the prophet will settle the matter, but she needed something more than tears, something that she can trade for some miracle, atlas she remembered, her late husband’s service to his master was a selling point for his wife, it was her blank cheque; it had to be. She knew she had to capitalize on that.
On getting to the master she narrated the problem, and threw in the punch line, her selling point, her argument, even though she did not present a request, she knew she was heard and something had to be done, she had leverage. At that point she was talking to a prophet and the master of her late husband, she was highly expectant even without a request, the master responded swiftly with some advice of what to do, a prerequisite for working some miracles which was able to pay-off the debts and save the lives of the family. The faithful service of the Late Husband was currency to purchase a miracle. Service is a beautiful thing, yea its most times like bitter honey but then there is a reward at the end. The question I would ask myself now is Have I Ever Served? Am I serving? Who? How? Why? Can anyone Leverage on my SERVICE even when am gone? Good day to you.
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