". His chapter on "Serving...For the Purpose of Godliness" (Chp 7) has been a great encouragement to my life this past week, so I wanted to share a portion of it with you.
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It's been gone for more than a century. Yet, if it weren't for TV commercials, more people would have heard of the Pony Express than the Federal Express.
an organized relay of horseback riders. The eastern end was St. Joseph, Missouri, and the western terminal was in Sacramento, California. The cost of sending a letter by Pony
Express was $2.50 an ounce. If the weather and horses held out and the Indians held off, that letter would complete the entire 2,000 mile journey in a speedy ten days, as did the report of Lincoln's Inaugural Address.
It may surprise you that the Pony Express was only in operation from April 3, 1860, until November 18, 1961 - just seventeen months. When the telegraph line was completed between two cities, the service was no longer needed.
Being a rider for the Pony Express was a tough job. You were expected to ride 75 to 100 miles a day, changing horses every 15 to 25 miles. Other than the mail, the only baggage you carried contained a few provisions, including a kit of flour, cornmeal, and bacon. In case of danger, you also had a medical pack of turpentine, borax, and cream of tarter. In order to travel light and to increase speed of mobility during Indian attacks, the men always rode in shirtsleeves, even during the fierce winter weather.
How would you recruit volunteers for this hazardous job? An 1860 San Francisco newspaper printed this ad for the Pony Express:
WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18.
Must be expert riders willing to risk daily.
Orphans preferred.
Those were the honest facts of the service required, but the Pony Express NEVER had a shortage of riders.
We need to be honest with the facts about the Discipline of serving God. Like the Pony Express, serving God is not a job for the casually interested. It's costly service. He asks for your life. He asks for service to Him to become a priority, not a pastime. He doesn't want servants who will give Him the leftovers of their life's commitments. Serving God isn't a short-term responsibility either. Unlike the Pony Express, His Kingdom will never go under, no matter how technological our world gets.
The mental picture we have of the Pony Express is probably much like the one imagined by the young men of 1860 who read that newspaper ad. Scenes of excitement, camaraderie, and the thrill of adventure filled their heads as they swaggered over to the Express office to apply. Yet few of them envisioned that excitement would only occasionally punctuate the routine of the long, hard hours and loneliness of the work.
The Discipline of serving is like that. Although Christ's summons to service is the most spiritually grand and noble way to life a life, it is typically as pedestrian as washing someone's feet. Richard Foster puts it starkly: "In some ways we would prefer to hear Jesus' call to deny father and mother, houses and land for the sake of the gospel, than His work to wash feet. Radical self-denial gives the fell of adventure. If we forsake all, we even have the chance of glorious martyrdom. But in service we are banished to the mundane, the ordinary, the trivial."
The ministry of serving may be as public as preaching or teaching, but more often it will be as sequestered as nursery duty. It may be as visible as singing a solo, but usually it will be as unnoticed as operating the sound equipment to amplify the solo. Serving may be as appreciated as a good testimony in a worship service, but typically it's as thankless as washing dishes after a church social. Most service, even that which seems the most glamorous, is like an iceberg. Only the eye of God ever sees the larger, hidden part of it.
Beyond the church walls, serving is baby-sitting for neighbors, taking meals to families in flux, running errands for the homebound, providing transportation for the one whose car breaks down, feeding pets and watering plants for vacationers, and, hardest of all, having a servant's hear in the home. Serving is as commonplace as the practical needs it seeks to meet.
WANTED: Gifted volunteers for difficult service in the local church. Motivation to serve should be obedience to God, gratitude, gladness, forgiveness, humility, and love. Service will rarely be glorious. Temptation to quit will sometimes be strong. Volunteers must be faithful in spite of long hours, little or no visible results, and possibly no recognition except from God in eternity.
page 115-117, 129
New summer haircut!!
