Learning to serve

This morning my bible reading was from John 13:1-17 (read it!) about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The little meditation in my devotional book talked about serving and how Jesus set an example for us as Christians of how to serve. In order to become great, you must become a servant.
I was thinking about it and instead of my normal ‘Lord, help me in whatever I do today’, I prayed, “Lord, please give me the opportunity to serve someone today”.
I worked at Surplus Sam’s today, and the day started out pretty busy, working through a new shipment of merchandise that had arrived the week before and not been finished. I threw myself at it with gusto and sorted, priced and ran stock up the three flights of stairs to the main floor. There were lots of menial tasks to be done, like collapsing boxes, scraping labels off of chairs and taking out the garbage. But I didn’t mind; it was an opportunity to serve.
Sometime in the afternoon Austin paged me from the upstairs and asked if I could bring up some toilet paper as apparently the customer restrooms needed it. No problem! I could deliver toilet paper!
I carried an armful up and wove my way down the hallways to the bathroom. I opened the door and instantly my jovial attitude evaporated. The smell hit me like a wall. There was human excrement all over the floor and it had been tracked in by someone’s shoes. The toilet paper was out and the last person in had used paper towels and plugged the toilet. I gagged.
My heart’s desire at that point, my dear reader, was not to serve. It was to call someone else and tell them it needed doing and that I was not a regular employee anyway and I was in the middle of doing something downstairs. Oh, I had all the excuses ready.
But something in me remembered that scripture this morning. An opportunity to serve. I went downstairs again and collected the bucket of cleaning supplies and a jar of air freshener and I steeled myself for battle.
Once inside the bathroom again I began to gag convulsively. It was horrific. I almost vomited but of course that would have made things worse, so I tried to mouth breath and think beautiful thoughts.
I bleached that bathroom thoroughly and plunged the toilet and dealt with the garbage and put the mango air freshener in.
I came out of the bathroom and headed towards the basement and suddenly felt something funny. I felt great. Not as in feeling happy, but feeling as if I had suddenly become a greater person. In cleaning up that poop when no one else wanted to, I had transitioned from ordinary to great. I floated down the stairs.
There was a wool carpet needed unrolling and vacuuming, and I knew it was a dirty job. No problem! That’s just the job for a servant…..or someone great.