Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered. Proverbs 11 :25
I have been dismayed at how much time and energy I have had to put into the simple act of changing cell phone service providers because I have been given a phone that is not one used by my current provider.
There are so many large and complicated issues in our daily lives; sometimes we must meet draining challenges in our work, and other times our loved ones might need our help in addressing overwhelming obstacles. Our own personal situations often lead us to have to sort out issues in areas where we are called to make big changes.
I find myself in all three categories at the moment, and alongside those issues my focus is drawn daily to the upheavals our country and the world are experiencing. Times like these require more effort to connect to God's heart and to be God's vehicle to the world he created.
My communications with my current cell provider have been frustrating. The customer service is truly customer disservice. The company has done everything it can to frustrate the customer looking for essential information, and to keep the customer powerless and ostracized.
The situation has made me realize that frustration with worldly things is a distraction from my life with God. I am anxious to solve this problem because I don't like what it is doing to my mind.
The one successful thing I did might not have helped to advance my request, but it helped me not to lose myself in this mess: I wrote a letter describing how Harry Potter might need to wrestle the information I need, and filled it with references to the stories I love so much. Who knows? Perhaps the person pushing the button of the automated email response got a chuckle out of reading my email. Anyway, I tried to make the best of a communication that was intended to convey the resistance I was sensing by the company that supposedly is set up to "serve" customers.
It is illuminating to note the times each day when something worldly tries to distract me from my real purpose. Praying for blessings on each person driving alongside me on the commute to work is more important than anything except driving safely. It is something I can do to serve the God and the people in God's world. It is small, but mighty. Like most prayers, the power is in how it changes the feed of human consciousness, and how it changes me.
It must be so frustrating to work in the service industry when the company you represent will not allow you to truly serve and relate to your customers. I can recall so many instances of helpful people on the other end of a phone call or email recently, and I hope I have indicated my gratitude sufficiently to those who have served so well. In my own work, I find that when people understand that I am ready and willing to be of service to them we accomplish great things. We connect and we engage our gifts.
Service is for some people their complete mission, their utter joy. I have not been guided to that kind of purity yet in my life, but I do know how right it feels sometimes to join the forces of those who feel complete in themselves and at the same time feel completed by the service they can offer to others.
Prayer: God who calls us to celebrate our being simply by being the gifts we can be for one another, teach me to focus on the beauty of serving you and my brothers and sisters rather than by wasting energy on things that pull me away from you. Help us all to remember these words: (1 Peter 4:10-11:) As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies - in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Mollie Manner
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