Whether you are a community volunteer, a housekeeper, a social worker, a church member, charity member, a missionary, or just someone with a heart for helping people, you've more than likely heard the term, "servant's heart'. It's usually a loose term, but also one typically with a religious spin on it, but sometimes it is good to take a step back and really dive deep into the true meaning of the phrase. Understanding it might just help one to become a more enabled to help others humbly.
Service requires patience, since the results of servitude are not always seen right away. But if you believe in those results enough and faithfully work toward them for the change you want to see in communities, towns, cities, perhaps nations, the results are truly amazing.Service demands you to be humble, accepting the standards you are placed under, and giving up what you desire for what someone else needs.
Service demands work, whether spiritual or physical. A misconception of service is that it's always about the physical actions a servant performs for another, but more often it happens that you will have to wrestle with the thoughts of the person you're serving, when they are troubled by something and just need support. It isn't easy comforting someone, you have to actually work when doing it. You have to listen to the other person, carefully, understand them, and choose the right words. It happens fairly often that the person could feel hurt by the words you chose, even if your intentions were good. It seems unfair from your perspective, but a servant wouldn't see it from their own perspective, but from the other's. That's the spiritual side of servitude. Performing physicals tasks are just as important as well to the work. They must do it humbly, fair or unfair, a servant performs their work to the fullest.
Service demands being an example to others. Going back to doing work to the fullest, your actions can end up showing who you are. The hard work you put in can rub off on others and encourage them to work hard as well. Actions can signify the kind of person you are, and that is why servitude demands the best of you.
Servants are dreamers. Going back to the idea of patience, a servant knows how to wait for their dream rather than feeling envy and coveting what another person already has. A servant never steps over someone else to have their own goals accomplished. Rather, a servant chooses to wait.
Servants are selfless. Their needs come second, sometimes naturally, but those that struggle with it are more human, and sometimes come across as the greater servants.
Servants don't ask for sympathy or gratitude. Sometimes there are unsung heroes in the world, and people that work tirelessly, always being there for someone, and the other might never fully realize the extent to which a servant went to make sure they were happy.
Servants might end up serving for people who might never be grateful. Even if they owe their prosperity to them. It's human nature to want attention when you have done something good, but those with the strongest hearts choose to go unnoticed, without seeking attention or gratitude, but help and save people in quiet. Seeking attention and favor is merely an act to acknowledge the self, which a servant does not acknowledge firstly. Again, their needs go second.
Servants never rise to fame. Even as a result of uplifting others and never finding the chance to be uplifted themselves, and as as a result, the selfish are often the ones rising to fame instead, and 'set the example' for humans instead, triggering a cycle of selfish desire. The servant's hear is neglected. Humans mislead other humans like the blind leading the blind, slowly decaying the world in a gradual fall. Despite this, the true servants never fail to show kindness, and become the movement of activism themselves to combat the selfish leadership in the world.
Perhaps the greatest example of servitude in real history is the history of the Native American tribes. The Native Americans were servants to one another and the land they inherited included.
They shared their food, crafted their homes together, took of the land's nutrients such as berries and other fruits, but re-buried them and planted seeds, and killed animals for meat, but preserved their remains, and used natural remedies for medicine. Everything they took from the land they gave back to nature, to preserve and lead a healthy way of life. They were selfless.
With that, they also led movements against the selfish leaders of the world. Several groups did. The Natives came to combat the Europeans that tried colonizing and expanding their already massive empires. The proletariat in Russia tried to combat the selfish bourgeoisie in control. The African tribes in the Congo rebelled against the Belgians that tried plundering riches and jewels from their land. The Hungarians banded together when they would not stand for the Soviet Union's communist bloc.
It's history.
Servants in this way, then, are also revolutionaries, since whether they win or lose, live or die, their selfless will and kindness will be etched into the world forever and live on. The servant's heart lives on in the hearts of others. Their servitude is fully realized, and just as they served well and had kindness in secret, they will be rewarded in secret, in ways people may never know.
