Finding service in our lives.

This is a serious post today, about something that I am passionate about.
Our church places a lot of emphasis on service. We go out of our way to plan service activities. We clean others homes, we tend their yards, we take people dinner after they've had a surgery, our youth collect items for needy families. We are service oriented to say the least.

How is it then, that the following scenario could possibly play out? A young mother gets up one Sunday morning and faces the daunting task of getting her 5 young children ready for church and getting them all out the door and to church on time. Her husband does not attend with her so she does this all by herself. She gets to church, and during sacrament meeting, her two youngest children start behaving badly. It's obvious she is struggling. The 3 year old boy is yelling and biting and throwing himself around. Feeding off his energy, the 18 month old begins to whine and try to espcape. Not a single person moved to help her. Instead, what she faced was a bunch of glares from people who have obviously forgotten what it's like to attend church with small children. Has it been so long that they've forgotten the constant battle to get littles ones dressed and out the door and to keep them quiet and in good spirits for a long and very adult meeting?
I was stuck in the middle of a pew, and wanted desperately to go help her. Perhaps I should have. Maybe I have no right to say anything because I didnt' get up either. I wanted to. I didn't know if I'd embarrass her if I got up (which would have been very obvious since I was sitting in the middle of the second row!) and walked all the way around to go to where she was. I didn't know if it would be a good idea to leave my own three small children to go and help her. I didn't know what I could do for her, really...but my heart went out to her. Perhaps I should judge others less for their choices not to act, and ponder on my own more. But the others didn't even seem to notice. Most either ignored the problem or shot her disturbing glares. "Why can't she just keep those kids quiet? She's disturbing the spirit!"

What she the one disturbing the spirit? Or was it the ones who were judging and giving distainful looks?

Before I had the chance to do anything, she got up and walked out, carrying two of her kids football style out the door with the other three lagging behind. It was obvious she'd had enough and was going home. I got up and ran out after her. I offered to let her two oldest stay at church with us as we had two extra seats in our car. She admitted she was at her patience level and needed to go, but let the two oldest stay. Before she left, she said, "I guess if I can't handle them, I should have stopped at three, huh?" My heart broke into a million pieces. I knew this was not her talking, but her voicing what she thought (and probably knew) to be the opinions of others that were judging her.

What happened to all those lessons about service and love and charity that they went into our ears but did not compute? Why can we find endless opportunities to serve people, but they must be conjured up in a meeting? Why can't we see the thousands of things we could do each and every day for the people walking and talking and sitting right beside us?

I challenge each of you to look around you and see the opportunities you have to help others in your daily life? A simple word of kindness, a calming presence to someone who looks frustrated, an offer to carry someone's bag as they struggle with not enough hands for their load. Noticing the small moments....the small things are what matter. After all, life is made up of mostly small moments. These are the things that truly portray service and Christlike love.