Personal Reflection Mission of the Poor Are you being served?

Christ said he came not to be served but to serve. Francis of Assisi used the word, servant, 159 times. This indicates how important this value was to him. When we minister to others, when can they really say: I have been served! It is good to take time to reflect on our ways of serving others, using the wisdom of our contemporaries who serve the needs of others, the middle class, etc., but especially the poor. I believe that poverty exists because we exist in a culture where there is more than enough material resources to go around, therefore we have moved past communal property. If there was barely enough to go around, people would pool their resources and efforts together. This addresses poverty in the modern world. Poverty should not really be used when talking about counties where everyone is impoverished. Poverty can only really exist when there are people who have more than the poor. In a strange way, poverty shows that a society has an abundance of resources. If everyone was poor, we would not call it poverty, we'd just call it life. For me, direct service of the poor requires serious, consistent selfexamination, deep prayer, and willingness to be converted. I believe that no one serves perfectly, gives completely or works flawlessly. We do not serve simply because it is good to do, or because it is the liberal agenda, or that it will prove our goodness. We serve first and most purely because in love we have been called and our response is to choose to return love. We serve because it is the Lords call. Service to the poor especially means doing ordinary things, with people noted as ordinary. I grew up surrounded by poverty, but because of the best parents and a family a kid could ask for I had no idea that I had grown up around that. I was always nervous going through sketchy neighborhoods and seeing people who appeared dangerous. I lived in a neighborhood just like that and saw people just like that and realized that I was completely ignorant. These people are trying to have an education for themselves and eager to learn things, and Im judging the hell out of them. But in that activity we had it changed all of that. I experienced the joy that the children shared with us even if they have that kind of situation.

In this activity I really felt happy and I experienced a lot from this. There is joy in serving especially when we see or meet someone in need and we sense what is called for, have a good idea or the right word and it turns out just right, we experience joy not only in what we did but how we did it and that it really helped someone.