Serve

The washing of the feet by Ghislaine Howard

Years ago when I met RW he told me: “We should not be talking to people about God. Everybody has their own picture of who God is and it just gets confusing. We need to focus on Jesus!” We had met when he first attended our ‘Wiser on the Way” course learning how to read the Bible. After the three day course he asked to continue reading together. We have been reading together ever since. 

Along the way, he had some other things to say that have stuck with me. One of them was that the most important thing one can do is to serve. That is my view of being a follower of Jesus as well, so it hit home. At the time, my colleague, Ruud, and I were caring for our dear sister in Christ, Willemien, as she entered the last days of her life here on earth. She left here to wait for us there at the beginning of April. But I often thought of that idea brought up by RW – serve. 

As RW has gotten older, he too has needed help. This past year, after Willemien passed away, it was as if we were given another opportunity to care once again. RW was diagnosed with Alzheimer and we, together with his girlfriend (who is 87), cared for him as he waited for a nursing home to take him in. His health steadily deteriorated and I found myself spending more and more time serving and less and less time being able to talk with him as we did in the past about God’s word. 

At the very beginning of this new year, he finally heard that there is a place for him in the nursing home that was his first choice. So now he has moved. I will do my best to empty his rental house of 40 years of life and living – in a month. But that will mean that he and I can perhaps return to a relationship of talking to one another and learning from one another. 

This year has been a year of caring. We are nowhere near our parents (Shirley’s parents have both passed away, Scott’s live in New York and Florida) but this is a season of life that comes with these challenges and blessings. I pray that we will never forget to be servants. That, after all, is exactly what Jesus showed us and told us to be. And He is the one we want to resemble and follow. 

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45